posted
Read a little bit more about Ruby Ridge before you begin to rant.
He was lucky they didn't storm up there sooner....and if they had it may have been better for everyone involved. A single bullet would have been safer, and would have protected his family, at least compared to what happened.
And don't tell me it was all big gov fault...you don't get into a multi-day standoff, armed, without knowing what it is you are getting into.
I hate how it turned out, but there was plenty of fault on BOTH sides. I think that the people on the gov side were criminals as well, though.
Both sides were freaking crazy, IMO.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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For me, the main problem is that two other defendants were acquitted of murder for the same incident based on the argument of self defense. The jurors and the judge decided that the FBI agents could have been killed by one of their guns, but that it didn't matter because they had plenty of cause to participate in the shooting in self defense.
Then in Peltier's trial the publicly bigoted judge disallowed ANY evidence or testimony from the previous trial, even if new testimony directly contradicted prior testimony. Then Peltier was convicted of murder on purely circumstantial evidence for the death that were already ruled to be the result of self defense!
I highly suggest In the Spirit of Crazy Horse by Peter Matthiesen for an in depth study of the shooting, as well as prior events and the trials. Incident At Oglala is a good documentary by Michael Apted (who directed Thunderheart, a fictional story inspired by the problems at Pine Ridge) that details the actual shoot out. I studied both sides pretty extensively and at this point agree with the defense that it was a political, not legal, decision.
The whole case was an absolute mess. Even watching the documentary, you can barely keep it together. A huge mess on both sides.
Posts: 3936 | Registered: Jul 2000
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That's hard to disgree with. However, McVeigh said that Ruby Ridge and Waco were the reasons for the Oklahoma City bombing. Force is not always how you deal with ignorance, but it seems the FBI hasn't quite figured that out yet.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
I added that part to my comment because I didn't want to have it seem that I was approving of the gov actions either.
I gotta say though.....what happened at Waco was horrible, but the agents there were not acting the same way the agents at RR did, IMO. That was all of the people in the compound, IMO, or at least mostly on them. They had military grade weapons, for heaven's sake, and wanted an excuse to use them.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
There was some government mistakenness at Waco, for sure-- but it was more on the level of two teams not communicating with each other or sharing intelligence more than just plain being crazy idiots.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I don't agree with how Waco was handled on either side.
The thing that bugs me about the FBI is that they have people with decades of experience in profiling and interrogation, and yet their solution to these problems largely involves violence. Every single agent should have enough training in profiling and interrogation so that they understand Randy Weaver/Tim McVeigh types as human beings. It's fairly counterproductive to dehumanize Americans citizens just because you hate their politics, and it's very nearly criminal to do so if you are a FBI agent with a gun. As far as I can tell, they are engaged in some pretty serious dehumanization of people like Weaver. This is not smart.
Posts: 3354 | Registered: May 2005
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