Iraq and Waco:
Same operation, larger scale — same end?
Has anybody but me noticed that this tragic and needless Iraq operation is just like Waco?
Most of you remember Waco, that 51-day siege in 1993 in which thugs with badges refused all opportunity to talk to
people and figure out what the problem was — if there was actually any problem at all — and instead chose to burn and
shoot to death a large number of innocent civilians — 75? 89? 104? — with no debate at all.
Afterwards the government convened a number of utterly rigged investigations and exonerated the federal agents for the
horrific deaths of children, women and men. But lost in all the discussion after the atrocity was the reason for why it
happened. Why did Waco happen? Do you remember the reason?
Now we face the same situation on a much larger scale. Why did we go to war in Iraq? Do you remember the real reasons?
President Bush insists Saddam Hussein is "a brutal dictator with weapons of mass destruction." Notice how Bush always
uses the same phrase.
However, weapons inspectors assembled by the U.S. could find no weapons of mass destruction of any significance.
Testimony on the record from 1995 demonstrates that Iraq actually did destroy its WMD shortly after the first Gulf War.
Further, Bush also insists that Saddam is assisting the alleged al-Qaeda terrorists, those phantom menaces who were
blamed for the World Trade Center tragedy and also used as an excuse to pulverize Afghanistan. With ample help from the
U.S. big business media, polls reveal that a majority of American believes Iraq is connected to the 9/11 attacks, even
though a majority of people in the world know that such an assertion is not supported by evidence available to all.
No matter that the entire world points out there can be no connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq because the two are not
allies, and philosophically at odds. Al-Qaeda is supposedly a fundamentalist Muslim movement and Saddam is supposedly a
secular kind of guy.
All world leaders except those who were bribed by the U.S. opposed an American invasion, but the U.S. cut off debate
and just invaded anyway. Since a large invasion force was assembled long before the U.N. debate on the matter, it is
clear in hindsight that the invasion would have taken place in any case, and that the U.S. simply had — and has — no
regard whatsoever for the opinions of any other countries.
The situation in Waco was similar, although on a scale that was national rather than international. Just as Bush is
trying to accumulate large amounts of money for his his friends in the oil business and military support industry
(Halliburton), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms, supported by many of the same powerful moguls of the war machine, was campaigning for larger congressional
funding.
According to author Chuck Missler ("The Rapture"), the raid on the Branch Davidian compound was not staged to enforce
the law, but for public relations purposes — and it was bungled.
Any resemblance to the current invasion of Iraq is not coincidental.
There was no evidence that the Davidians had violated any law, Missler wrote. The BATF used fabricated information to
obtain a warrant from a careless magistrate. Some of the allegations made on the affidavit were fraudulent, according to
Missler.
David Koresh had previously allowed inspections for weapons and had made an offer to talk to BATF agents about their
current concerns. Also, Koresh had cooperated with state officials — just as Saddam has cooperated with weapons
inspectors — when two previous allegations of child abuse were made.
It has never been determined who fired first at Waco, Missler wrote. A critical piece of evidence — the front door — is
missing. Indeed, the federal government saw to it that much evidence was destroyed or burned in the flames. This was not
the first time the federal government tampered with or destroyed evidence. Much of this came out in the trial of the
people involved with the Ruby Ridge incident, in which the judge reprimanded the government for evidence tampering.
Although the federal government used abuse of the Davidian children as one of the rationales for the assault on the
compound, they subjected the children to searchlights at night and the sounds of rabbits being slaughtered, played on
loudspeakers round-the-clock, along with other forms of psychological warfare. Finally, the U.S. government wound up
killing them.
The "tear gas" the Davidians were subjected to was CS dissolved in methylene chloride. CS is a highly toxic military
gas which is banned for warfare use by international treaty. Government infrared tapes support the thesis that it was
the government that started the fire, with methylene chloride, not the Branch Davidians.
Missler reports that according to Dr. Edward Allard, former head of the Defense Department's Night Vision Laboratory,
the infrared images show conclusively that the Davidians were machine-gunned as they tried to flee the burning building.
And yet, official history records all this as a minor skirmish in a sleepy Texas town, in which the U.S. government
killed a bunch of people for reasons that remain fuzzy, and that no one — except the surviving victims — was punished.
The remarkable aspect of the similarities between Iraq and Waco is not in the specific facts, but in the process that
created the conditions for U.S. government mass murder of innocents.
It is a process that is readily observable in all of these feloniously constructed emergencies that have afflicted the
U.S. public over the past 15 years: both World Trade Center disasters, the Ruby Ridge ambush, the Oklahoma City
demolition, and now Iraq.
A mysterious crime supposedly happens, the government responds with overwhelmingly lethal force, subsequent
investigations are riddled with instances of evidence manipulation, and government perpetrators are exonerated.
It is obvious to the more suspicious among us that the U.S. government creates all these pretexts for armed aggression
against innocent people for a single purpose — to increase the profits for and public reliance upon a devastating
military monster that reaps billions of dollars for those master manipulative millionaires who own the companies that
produce the weapons.
This formula, in fact, also was really clear during the Vietnam war, and probably could be applied in previous
conflicts as well, except I was not alive for those and don't know my history well enough to thoroughly analyze them.
But this demonic formula remains unrecognized by a majority of the American people, because they're lazy and accept
what they hear on television without asking any questions. A majority of Americans has yet to figure out that what they
hear on television is exactly what the rich men who rig these crimes against humanity want them to hear.
Today, with visions of the torn bodies of murdered children and the bumbling perplexity of American soldiers caught in
unanticipated sandstorms dancing in their brains, more people are beginning to suspect that a connection exists between
the lies told by America's leaders and the deaths wreaked by the American military, even upon their own people.
More people are beginning to realize that the American formula for world economic hegemony involves the continuing mass
murder of innocents all over the world for reasons that are dishonest, cynically contrived, and diametrically opposed to
all the great teachings provided to us by the most revered religious and philosophical leaders down through history.
Whether enough people will come to realize that the way America deals with the world — by ignoring all questions and
objections and killing all those who oppose its greedy schemes — is at this moment in history an unanswerable question.
Whether enough people will come to realize that American policies are about to turn the whole world into a radioactive
cinder still remains to be seen, even at this late hour.
************
John Kaminski is a writer who still believes in the real American dream, with liberty and justice for all, but who has
noticed that his country has been hijacked by terrorists in expensive suits. His collection of essays, titled "America's
Autopsy Report," is due to be published soon by Dandelion Books.