Weep for the Children of Waco

I am currently trying to justify the expenditure of time I just made watching the California Recall Debate which ended a few minutes ago. And I can�t. Justify, that is.

It was pretty much a waste of time, predictable, painfully unfunny despite an occasional �light moment� between Transylvania-born Arianna Huffington and the �Roid Austrian body builder.

The biggest loser it seemed to me was either Cruz Bustamante or �Gris� Davis, his Gray Eminence, The Golden State�s Governor Pro Tem and in search of a job. To me Bustamante appeared weak, repeating little more than canned mantra, probably a pretty good guy to invite to a party. Davis wasn�t invited to the slugfest and most likely lost ground because everybody enjoyed a pig pile upon his policies of the past several years.

Mr. What�s his face, the Green Candidate could only offer up spending more monies as a panacea to California�s well-documented ills. He would like Californians to get more involved in the kind of international politics many of us despise. His solution for universal health care, having it funded entirely by employers, is the kind of thinking that has driven hundreds of thousands high paying jobs to Nevada and elsewhere.

Mr. McClintock, conservative Republican, probably did the best job debate wise. He spoke well, stayed on topic, and maintained a sense of gravitas (love that word) and mastery of the issues. Sadly, in California, a whole heap o� gravitas and a buck won�t buy you a mug at a brew pub. Californians, like so many Americans, are not concerned with truth, justice, and something called �The American Way�, they are far more concerned with glitz, quick fix, celeb, and star power.

Then there was Arnold. He probably didn�t do himself any harm, but sure as heck didn�t make any great inroads into the hearts of undecided voters. Arnold is my personal favorite, but that�s mainly for the delicious irony of seeing a muscle bound actor at the head of that state�s government. We supported Jesse Ventura for the same reasons. I was a little kid then and thought Ventura walked on water. Would support him again in a heartbeat.

The recall is on. We shall have a verdict in less than two weeks. Some call it a carnival or a circus. It isn�t, the current recall election way out there is the direct result of two factors, mainly: (1) fiscal mismanagement and (2) the new politics of hate and attrition. Maybe the �Big One� will hit and the whole state will slide into the Pacific. Or maybe it will hit and leave California where it is and the rest of us can slide into the Atlantic.

WEEP FOR THE CHILDREN OF WACO is part of the title of a brief essay I wrote on my own web site this week. You can find it at http://expage.com/lukester275.

The frying of the bible kooks, the Branch Davidians way back in 1993 has been much on my mind lately.

I have tried and tried, but am yet able to get a clear view of just what the role of then General Wesley Clark was in the tragedy. We know that he, from Fort Hood, supplied seventeen military vehicles and a number of personnel. So far there is silence on the subject of any specific responsibilities he might have borne for the siege and its fiery conclusion.

David Allyn up in Seattle and head honcho of http://politicalpulpit.com made two comments. He said that General Clark was only following orders. He also asked what I would have done had I been in charge of the siege. What seems to be the official line at PPdC is that Wes Clark is something akin to the second coming of christ himself and will deliver us all from the hell that is the Bush Administration.

The �following orders� suggestion is easily parried with the reminder that this is the same line taken by the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg war trials following WW2. It was rejected then and subsequently at Lieutenant Calley�s Court Marshall after the murder of civilians at a place called My Lai in �Nam. If Wesley Clark were not directly involved with the extermination of the men, women, and children of Waco, it should be easy to prove. If not, it could become his Achilles� heel over the next few weeks and months.

The What Would Luke Do question is meaningless. The foresight of hindsight is a futile exercise. If the truth be known, I was only seven at the time of the tragedy, knew nothing about it then, and had just lost to some wasting heart disease my own birth father. The Old Lady and I had moved to a run down trailer park where she eked out an existence living off social security checks, and the tips she earned as a cocktail waitress at Billy Boob�s Country and Western Road House out in the sticks of Central Georgia. Good old mom made more on her back than she did hustling drinks, but that kind of income goes unreported. I hated the boozy cowboys she used to bring home for what that crowd dubbed a �midnight rodeo�.

As a little kid, I told Mr. Allyn, whom I respect exceedingly, by the way, that I would have most likely cried and wet my shorts when I heard about the little children burning on that final day in April, 1993. But I do hope were I ever in charge of some similar operation I would have the decency to realize that the first duty of government is to protect the lives of its citizens, not to squander them in ego ridden, revenge driven vendetta.

Did General Wesley Clark have a part in this? We need to know and know soon.

So the death of the Branch Davidians has been very much on my mind of late. There are many unanswered questions even though two �official� inquiries have been held, some middle level jobs lost, some FBI people re-assigned. Could it happen again tomorrow? Sadly, I think so. All the government would have to do now is to brand the cult members as �terrorists� and it would be perfectly OK to train an M-16 on a five-year-old �evildoer� and blow her brains out. What the hell is this country coming to?

Not that the Branch Davidians were blameless, of course, or that their idiot leader, David Koresh, was anything approaching sane. But misguided religiosity is no excuse for the Federal Government and the U.S. Army to snuff out the lives of American citizens. That means, I think, that the FBI can act as judge, jury, and executioner at a time and place of its own choosing.

Ashcroft is probably a decent man, if a little too conservatively religious for my tastes. But what about those lesser lights in the JD whose overwhelming ambition to get ahead, to make a name for themselves, far outweighs any sense of justice, of right and wrong. So it is with the Patriot Act. How will it be interpreted in five, ten, or fifty years? Don�t mess with the Constitution.

Somebody suspended the Posse Comitatus clause to turn the Davidians into over-done Bar-B-Cue. That is the only way the military can be used against American citizens. Was it Janet Reno in her first few weeks as Attorney General, or was it done closer to Waco? More questions that need answering.

Reno said on the final, horrifying day of the siege, once informed of the extent of the tragedy, �The buck stops here�. The Lady in Blue seemed to assume full responsibility for what had happened and then spent the next eight years avoiding that same buck.

It is fun to see the Republican Conspiracy Theorists trying to figure out why Clark is running? These guys are as nuts as the morons on the other side who see only collusion between the House of Saud and the Bush family, or are convinced that Halliburton was awarded a fat contract in Iraq because Vice President Cheney is further lining his pockets with obscene profits.

My favorites include the notion that Wes is simply a stalking horse for Hillary, or that this is Billary�s ploy to get back into the White House even if he has to do so as the �first husband�.

A few years ago I got received an email that listed all the people associated with the Clinton�s who had died mysteriously�.the implication being that the dynamic duo had bumped them off one-by-one. The list seemed to include anybody who might tell the truth about Whitewater, The Arkansas Mafia, or lost, strayed, and stolen legal records. I didn�t believe it then; don�t now.

I don�t trust Conspiracy Theories. They are simply too easy to make up, too attractive to the individual who prefers self-delusion to the discovery of truth.

Very late at night. This article is also late, but we hope that Mr. Kleinfeld follows the �better late than never� philosophy. Will proofread in the AM and send.

College is going well, incidentally, it is a real improvement over high school. Part of it is the kind of �kid� who attends this public, non-residential institution. The average age at Macon State is twenty-seven, a full ten years older than myself. These guys are a lot more serious than the drink-all-night frat, party types my own age. Don�t think I am going to miss much of anything; went to a great party Saturday night and almost managed to convince the Old Man that it was a Study Seminar before our first round of examinations.

Hangovers are no fun. Examinations are not that bad if you do the work as it is assigned.

Don�t forget to check us out at http://politicalpulpit.com and http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html where every title is a link.

Ciao,

Luke �Italian Power� Angelo
Macon, Georgia�.a pathetic little excuse for a slumbering southern city,
C. Joke Ellis, Mayor

ADDENDUM
October 1, 2003

Like two ships passing in the dark, Ian and I missed each other last week. Or at least I missed him; maybe he is ignoring me. What I had written then should appear this evening�.so we offer this brief addendum as, well, an addendum.

For a week your humble whateverthehellIam has been researching the history of Posse Comitatus, which is the law that forbids the use of military against civilians.

It�s origins are in British Common Law, from the time between the exit of the Romans in the fith century and the coming of the Normans in 1066. It said basically, back then, that only civilians could participate in the rite of �hue and cry� which set them on the track of known felons. In other words, at this time, it simply meant that civilian law dealt with civilians and the army need not get involved.

The notion was bantered about during the framing of the the American Constitution after the Revolutionary war. Posse Comitatus was not incorporated into that most sacred of all documents and the first president to use Federalized militia to put down insurrection was George Washington, who used it several times including the suppression of the Whisky and Shay�s Rebellions.

The military was called out several times over the years. It was federal troops who did in John Brown and his gang of religious wild and crazy guys.

In 1876, President Grant used Federal troops against southern states which had been re-admitted to the Union. This angered the Congress which passed the POSSE COMITATUS ACT of 1878. It decreed that, except by act of Congress or provision within the Constitution, the armed services were not to be used against civilians.

Worked pretty well until a Republican President and Democratic Congress in 1986 passed legislation that permitted the use of the various branches of the Service to be used in the idiotic War On Drugs. We began the descent down a slippery slope.

We are currently sliding, gaining speed and momentum down that slope. Between that little piece of legislation less than twenty years ago, and potential abuses within the current Patriot Act, it is becoming increasingly clear to many that we are headed for some kind of police state. Then it won�t matter much whether it be �Heil Hillary� or �Heil George� because each of us will be the property of the state. George Orwell didn�t have the Internet; he just got the year wrong.

Because one single Branch Davidian had a history of drug use, some Feds claimed the use of federal military was justified in 1993 when the Bible Kooks were sacrificed.

At Waco the military supplied seventeen vehicles and fifteen soldiers to the siege. These all came from Fort Hood, where General of the Army Wes Clark was in charge. The Texas State National Guard supplied more than a dozen others.

Where does this leave us? I don�t know yet. Our research into Waco and the Role, if any, played by General Clark is just beginning. But there are gaps in the record�.it is not easy to find the requisite information unless one relies on the two government inquiries into the fiasco.

Want to get this off to DMY. So we will stop here.

Please check out http://expage.com/lukester276 LUKES TOTALLY TASTELESS HALLOWEEN STORY FOR TOTS 2003. Every year we do one story designed to be read out loud by sadistic parents to their young children. This year it concerns a sweet little six-year-old girl named Sydney.

Ciao,

Luke Angelo
http://members.aol.com/luciusson/contents.html
Macon, Georgia

After the Civil War

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Luke Angelo, Cyberbrat Out Of Hell, lives in Macon, GA, where he regularly causes trouble and proves that the pen is far mightier than the Mayor