You've made several points, so I'll address them one at a time. ... I haven't seen any evidence that the FBI used anything but tear gas, and tanks for the purpose of knocking down walls. They used the tanks because the walls were brick, IIRC. Normal swat vehicles don't have the kahunas to punch through a brick wall. The "official" explanation of the fire was that a tear gas canister hit a candle, or some other flammable substance (the propellant of the gas is also flammable, I might add), and started it when the cannister vented.
Is there even such a thing as a tank that shoots flames? Yes, there is. Tank mounted flame throwers have not been used in recent times however. (No need to) Flamethrowers are more of a close range anti-personnel weapon.
Therefore, had the FBI anticipated a fire, they would have had a fire truck and a water supply nearby. Unfortunately, they did not anticipate a fire, and thus didn't have the equipment nearby. In addition the compound was in a rural part of waco. No easy fire service. But then, a lot of mistake were made in the waco incident.
Also remember that people's blogs are their opinions. and that there are a lot of "conspiracy theorists" on the web (with apologies to ernunnos) that are anti-government.
The reason that Waco is used as an example is probably because the FBI screwed up. Our government is prone to mistakes (and quiet! all that laughing!), and sometimes people die as a result. All this does is give fodder to people to create half truths and outright false statements on how things should have been done, and everything else.
Dealing with a suspect statement is easy. Ask for proof and hard evidence. remember that video, especially low quality video, is easily forged or tweaked, and it is all too easy to take an artifact of the video as something that was not there.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-03-01 03:22 pm (UTC)... I haven't seen any evidence that the FBI used anything but tear gas, and tanks for the purpose of knocking down walls.
They used the tanks because the walls were brick, IIRC. Normal swat vehicles don't have the kahunas to punch through a brick wall. The "official" explanation of the fire was that a tear gas canister hit a candle, or some other flammable substance (the propellant of the gas is also flammable, I might add), and started it when the cannister vented.
Is there even such a thing as a tank that shoots flames?
Yes, there is. Tank mounted flame throwers have not been used in recent times however. (No need to) Flamethrowers are more of a close range anti-personnel weapon.
Therefore, had the FBI anticipated a fire, they would have had a fire truck and a water supply nearby.
Unfortunately, they did not anticipate a fire, and thus didn't have the equipment nearby. In addition the compound was in a rural part of waco. No easy fire service. But then, a lot of mistake were made in the waco incident.
Also remember that people's blogs are their opinions. and that there are a lot of "conspiracy theorists" on the web (with apologies to
The reason that Waco is used as an example is probably because the FBI screwed up. Our government is prone to mistakes (and quiet! all that laughing!), and sometimes people die as a result. All this does is give fodder to people to create half truths and outright false statements on how things should have been done, and everything else.
Dealing with a suspect statement is easy. Ask for proof and hard evidence. remember that video, especially low quality video, is easily forged or tweaked, and it is all too easy to take an artifact of the video as something that was not there.