Could the ATF Have Prevented the Waco Massacre?

Cubo de Sangre said:
They could have arrested him when he was out and about. If they thought he was building an arsenal then it's pretty dumb to allow him access to it when trying to take him in.
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No doubt that’s what should’ve happened, but the informant within the Branch Davidians gave them bad intel saying that David Koresh never left the compound. In addition, outside of Ruby Ridge which was attributed to the shooting of Weaver’s wife, there hadn’t been a large scale shootout with the feds by the militia movement. Some small scale stuff, sure, but nothing that really would’ve prepared the feds for anything other than a relatively peaceful surrender on a minor weapons charge.
 
lifelessheap said:
The Branch Dividians would have hurt nobody if left alone. Land of the Free? I don't think so.
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They would have kept violating children. They still had an end-times messianic psycho leading them, and they still had lots of weapons. Pretty funny that you're so fucking gullible that you think that could have ended well.
 
Sometimes shit goes bad.

They had a bad plan and they had completely miscalculated the capacities of the Branch-Davidians. Probably their greatest mistake was to not properly evaluate the psychology involved with such a cult.

It is kind of like the North Korea situation. They're just begging for a "sign" to give legitimacy to all of the propaganda that they've been feeding their subjects. An armed intervention does exactly that. The doomsday cult activates its "end stage plan" and the results are exactly what you saw.

A more effective plan, probably, would've been a coordinated attempt to isolate the leaders of the cult from the subjects. Without the "charismatic leader" rallying his troops to commit themselves to violent and suicidal action, the level of resistance would've probably been much less, and the ranks would've broken easier.
 
The atf wasn't ready, and the fbi were fkn idiots.
 
The ATF were under threat of getting their budget cut and some lawmakers were calling for them to be abolished. They hired a Public relations consultant to arrange the press for the arrest that would make them look like heroes. They could of arrested Koresh on one of his many trips into town or on his daily jog but they chose to go in hard instead of smart. Koresh came out unarmed to talk and shortly afterwards some ATF agents started shooting the chow dogs chained up outside the front of the building. The gunfire caused confusion on both sides, the other agents thought a firefight had broken out and opened fire wounding Koresh and fatally wounding an old man behind the front door. The steel door and the video footage proving the ATF opened fire first would by coincidence disappear. Their tactic of pushing in the walls and pumping in tear gas with armored vehicles trapped most of the people in their homemade tornado shelter when the door became blocked by falling debris.
 
All they had to do was wait until Koresh went into town to pick up groceries. They could have arrested him with minimal incident. But they were determined to have a spectacular showdown. The wanted the alphabet agencies to flex on camera.
 
Imagine this happening in 2018.
 
jonharrison said:
No doubt that’s what should’ve happened, but the informant within the Branch Davidians gave them bad intel saying that David Koresh never left the compound. In addition, outside of Ruby Ridge which was attributed to the shooting of Weaver’s wife, there hadn’t been a large scale shootout with the feds by the militia movement. Some small scale stuff, sure, but nothing that really would’ve prepared the feds for anything other than a relatively peaceful surrender on a minor weapons charge.
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What I read was the Koresh was out and about regularly. I think that was community testimony and not the government cover your ass shit.
 
IndyCovaHart said:
The Ruby Ridge incident literally happened the previous year so they had experience and recent experience to boot.
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At ruby ridge they didnt raid them, and things turned out badly. YOu think doing the same thing as ruby ridge was a good idea?
 
rearnakedchoke said:
Probably a case of who has a bigger dick. I dont know man.
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So the lives of dozens of children don't matter because of, "who has a bigger dick?"

oh welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Who cares about children curled into death spirals...?
 
Gregolian said:
While the people at Ruby Ridge and the Branch Dividian or however you spell it were fucked people the way the government went about dealing with them is even worse.
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They were probably taking in money the government wasn't getting any piece of, and sitting on land the government wanted.
 
the government had no business getting involved, and it was essentially wreckless revenge mission.
 
Waco was a clusterfuck for many different reasons. There's no single thing that could have changed to prevent a giant shit heap; it went bad at every step. And once things kicked off, every step past that point was fucked as well. It's a textbook for law enforcement on exactly what NOT to do.

Fun fact: There was a section of the bunker so full of spent ammunition that bodies were completely concealed beneath.
 
Cubo de Sangre said:
What I read was the Koresh was out and about regularly. I think that was community testimony and not the government cover your ass shit.
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He did, to go to gun shows and run errands. The government didn’t know, however, that their observation post across the road from the compound was made, and that Koresh became wary about leaving when he knew the front gate was being watched. This lead the informant to pass on that he never left. It was bad intel on the part of the ATF, and having a surveillance team be discovered certainly shows incompetence, but it wasn’t malicious. They just didn’t put in the time or effort for proper intel because, once again, they had never dealt with anything like this before.
 
lifelessheap said:
So the lives of dozens of children don't matter because of, "who has a bigger dick?"

oh welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Who cares about children curled into death spirals...?
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As opposed to being raped and abused in the compound? Or having the people in the compound also spreading the fire?
 
Waco was the result of the ATF ruling that M16 fire control group parts WERE by themselves machineguns; they found a branch davidian buying m16 fire control groups at a gunshow (which will not make an ar15 full auto by themselves, giggle switch parts won’t fit AR15 blah blah blah) made the ruling to go get them and found zero converted AR15s in the aftermath.
 
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