T
he main lesson that Washington policymakers drew from the Waco debacle is : Truth delayed is truth defused.
Scott Horton and I discussed the anniversary of the final federal assault at Waco on his talk show last Friday. Scott has done annual Waco show ever since he went on the air in 1999. Here’s a direct link to the MP3.
There were legions of people whose eyes were opened up to the nature of Leviathan by the what the feds did at Waco and all the lies they told afterwards. Scott was raised a hundred miles away from the scene of the crime and he was seared by the national and local nonchalance about the FBI sending in the tanks and helping start a fire that left 80 people dead.
Here’s a few of my comments from the interview:
* “The feds were lying basically from the start – yet most of the media just rolled over and was happy to be a government tool. In the days after the final FBI assault, the Washington press corps made Attorney General Janet Reno a hero… You have all these dead Americans in the wake of a reckless federal assault – and the media’s response is: ‘Thank God for Janet Reno!’ What the hell does a person have to do to be a non-hero in Washington?”
* “The Feds were outraged because the Davidians have guns. But Texans have lots of guns – it’s not like New Jersey, for God’s sake.”
* “The 1995 congressional hearings were a bit of a bust because most congressmen didn’t have the balls to vigorously question federal agents and FBI honchos.”
* “The so-called independent Danforth report on Waco in 2000 sounded as if there was a widespread mental problem in the American people for ever thinking that the feds had done bad things at Waco. Danforth said he hoped his report would help ‘restore the government’s faith in the people'” – but it wasn’t average Americans who gassed the children at Waco.
* “Perhaps the biggest legacy of Waco is how it spurred a change in how government at all levels treat supposed threats from private citizens. Politicians saw how much the feds got away with at Waco – so they said, ‘Let’s use more force because it works for us and it’s fun to domineer people.”
As I wrote in a May 15, 1995 Wall Street Journal piece headlined “Waco Must Get a Hearing:” “The ghosts of Waco will continue to haunt
the U.S. government until the truth is told about what the government did and why.” Unfortunately, the government continues covering up many of the key details of the federal assaults on the Davidians.
Here’s a link to a web page with most of my 1995+ articles on Waco and Ruby Ridge.
Truth delayed is truth defused. <– yep, that whole "trickle it out, then call it 'old news, why can't you move on?' when it's finally all there" game.
Though you have to admit, there was also a strong strain of the traditional "demonize the weird, so the normals won't care what you do to 'em!" involved as well
ya, that worked well for the feds, too.
And, for future reference, any interview with Scott Horton could easily be described as “rollicking.”
But it was tame compared to the Cogswell speech.
I suspect that I overuse the word “rollicking” vis-à-vis interviews – I was abstaining belatedly in honor of Lent.
So … you gave up rollicking for Lent? Nunc pro tunc, as we say in the legal industry?
That’s the story of my life. Being virtuous retroactively is my only hope.