It's a crowded field, but he's definitely one of the worst; at least, historically. He hasn't been a senator for a long time, but we narrowly escaped having him as Vice President under - you guessed it - George W. Bush. James Bovard reminds us of Danforth's disgraceful whitewash of the attack on the Branch Davidian compound in 1993.
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Just read that article today. I always knew that the Davidian raid was a total clusterfark from the get-go, but didn't know many of the incriminating details outlined in the piece. And of course Janet Reno and the rest of DoJ lied to the American people and to Congress throughout, for seven years. And not only got away with it, but were lauded as heroes for it. If anything, it does prove that the left loves federal law enforcers, so long as they get to wear the boot.
ReplyDeleteI often think that the ATF is by far the worst federal law enforcement agency... except for all the other ones.
Old Paco spent most of his law enforcement career working for the ATF, and I believe he would agree with you. When he joined, it was still just the Alcohol Tax Unit of the U.S. Treasury, and they were concerned exclusively with chasing moonshiners (and that's the only part of the business he was ever involved with). Later on, the outfit picked up responsibility for tobacco tax enforcement, too. It was in the late 60s, I believe, that the agency took on firearms responsibility, and in the early 1970s that it became an independent bureau (becoming the BATF, or more familiarly, the ATF). My father said things really began to fall apart when the agency became independent of the Treasury. Previously, they got all the funding they needed from Treasury, and their scope was modest; however, when it became independent, the ATF had to go before congress and justify its own, now separate, funding. That's when the agency started getting delusions of grandeur, and we've now seen a whole series of foul-ups, including most notoriously the slaughter at Waco.
ReplyDeleteI was overseas when the Branch Davidian siege happened and ended. This was prior to the internet, and so all I knew about it was from secondary source, but it was obvious to me at the time that Reno was being an idiot by playing to Koresh's and the Davidians' script. This was a millennial cult, believing that they were under threat from an illegitimate overweening militarized government, and Reno and her merry band of idiots played exactly according to their worst case scenarios. It looked exactly as though Koresh had given Reno a copy of the script with her parts high lighted and she read them verbatim.
ReplyDeleteA few years later I read an analysis that more or less confirmed my impressions, that stated that the Feds were mislead by their experience dealing with organized criminals, which the Davidians were not. Regardless of what you see on TV and the movies, cartels on US soil do not shoot it out with the feds, because there's no walking away from that one. Get caught with drugs and weapons and other contraband, well, a good lawyer can plea bargain you down to a minor sentence or maybe even get the case thrown out on technical or procedural grounds. Kill federal cops and you're toast. So in general, the feds show up waving their guns and the criminals carefully lay down theirs and take a step back, carefully keeping their hands visible. Their weapons are for other gangs, and for intimidating civilians and lesser law enforcement.
The DoJ expected the same thing to happen in Waco. They missed the fact that the Davidians were expecting an armed assault from the evil government, prior to their private version of Armageddon. And the feds gave them precisely that.
I was totally ashamed that Americans weren't pissed off over that and Ruby Ridge.
ReplyDeleteThey just accepted what the Clintonsistas and our fine media betters fed them even though it was blatantly obvious that they were lying scumbags.
Nobody cared about all the children murdered. I even say some media explain how they had to do what they did to Save Those Children!
Better murdered, in other words. But again, people accepted it and even re-elected Clinton.
That's when I lost faith in the American electorate.
I haven't clicked the link for the same reason I haven't re-watched Blackhawk down, it just pisses me off at the fecklessness of the American gov't and the American people in letting the Clintons do whatever crimes they wanted.
The economy was good! is what all the assholes who like Clinton say.
I haven't clicked the link for the same reason I haven't re-watched Blackhawk down, it just pisses me off at the fecklessness of the American gov't and the American people in letting the Clintons do whatever crimes they wanted.
ReplyDeleteI hear you, brother. For similar reasons, I have great difficulty reading even legitimate accounts of the Russia hoax and the political criminals who perpetuated it. The knowledge that the most odious deep state scum actually avoided justice almost makes me sick to my stomach.
And my faith in the American electorate began crumbling about the same time as yours. I never understood how so many people failed to see Clinton's shallowness and basic sociopathy. His popularity amazed me for years, until I finally just admitted to myself the unpleasant fact that ours was a shabby, ignorant age, in which a fifth-rate human being like Bill Clinton not only could become president but was practically destined to be.
ReplyDeleteYou can Write a powerful paragraph my Friend.
ReplyDeleteAgape.
Uncle Ron from downunder.
Thanks, Ron! Hope all is well with you and yours!
ReplyDeleteI was in the USA when the Waco fiasco went down, but the news on the article played to the federal agencies, with the Davidians being painted as a dangerous criminal. When I (finally) saw videos of the assault, I was infuriated -- those "tanks" were, in fact, Combat Engineering Vehicles (a/k/a CEVs), M60 tanks modified for breaching obstacles under enemy fire. Against wooden buildings? Casualities were inevitable.
ReplyDeleteOther (unconfirmed) facts about Waco, which I heard from a retired police officer with extensive special operations experience:
Apparently the cult leader (Benjamin Roden, IIRC) also liked to have breakfast in downtown Waco many mornings. As the article notes, the ATF could have arrested him at any time, but chose an assault instead.
The on scene FBI commander (Richard Rogers) had his doubts about the assault. He called my retired police officer friend (they had served together in some fashion), and discussed the planned raid. My friend urged him to call off the raid. Alas, that never happened.
Ruby Ridge is a bit different -- word of mouth travels fast, and that story was all over this part of the country. A lot of people took it as rumor, but I found otherwise shortly thereafter. People were infuriated, but the official story painted a different picture. Disinformation campaigns weren't understood back then, unfortunately.