The tragedy of Waco

By J. Walter Diamond, September 17, 1999

News flash from the gumshoe. With the wide release of startling new information detailed in a recent award winning documentary feature film: Waco: Rules of Engagement, Mr. Michael McNulty's efforts have delivered yet another blistery bomb shell on Attorney General Janet Reno's door step. Pictures of refuted evidence not one but two, as we now have learned, pyrotechnic shells. Gotcha- journalism prevails once again. Yet all the kings horses and all the kings men could not put the Waco compound of the Branch Davidian's back together again.

It was an early morning television broadcast that caught my attention that cold Grey morning. Waco's weary last stand against an army of news hounds and now as we have just learned a small secret company of heavily armed government militia. The reporters were at it again. They were snooping at truth, but unwilling to tell the whole truth. Frustrated, like so many of you, I was finishing a report at home and just happened to tune in on the fiery TV violence. Unforgivable violence, because 18 children died in the Waco firestorm that April morning back in 1993, along with some 60 adults.

The FBI was there. The ATF was there. And now we have learned a high tech U.S. Army unit called Delta Force was also there. These units were under the woeful command of the newly appointed Attorney General Janet Reno. Ms. Reno answers to the President of the United States, Mr. William Jefferson Clinton, who seems to answer to no one except himself and his highly paid cadre of artful political spin- doctors!

The big question in all of this is why did it take the combined efforts of three major United States national crime fighting units, plus local law enforcement and the Texas Rangers to subdue the handful of people at Waco? It's a little bit like using a baseball bat to conquer a tempest fly on a teapot. More importantly, why did it have to end so violently? Were the Clinton's doing their Monday night quarterbacking again? Was it that important to control the presidential -image of their newly constituted regime? These questions most certainly will begin to blur as we once again attempt to climb the slick-Willie muddy-hill of what otherwise might be known in more common circles as the "truth." How the nation longs for good old fashion truth.

Enter once again the deep tragedy of political spin. It pours in like a pounding rain to discredit, dodge the argument, cover -up the truth, soften the lie, or create a new cover- up to explain away the old lie.

Wouldn't it be just grand to see politician's belly up to the bar and just tell the truth? Is anyone out there? Sleeping majorities wake up and demand, more than weak -kneed phony apologies.

"Spin" is the most damnable and despicable of all the political corruption! Yet, once again major spin has oozed out of the Clinton Administration. In the political days before JFK, if a politician committed high crimes and misdemeanors, he hung his head in shame and resigned his office. Usually the same day the media found out about the misadventures. Whack and he was gone. With this present administration, there are so many scandals and cover-ups, I've lost track. Whitewater cries for justice and consequence, yet nothing concrete has stuck! Contrition abounds yet there is no real consequence to be found anywhere! Everyone's taking full responsibility, no one is resigning their office. So how much responsibility have they truly taken?

We need to teach these lying politicians a good hard lesson. When you play with other people's lives, violate first amendment rights, violate sacred constitutional rights, which is at the core of what happened at Waco, you must pay! You must loose your right to govern, at any level of government and maybe even loose your job and go to jail. At the very least decorum demands an honest apology they should mean it! Then they can resign their post, as they have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they, (so-called leaders at the top) not their super-scapegoat- underlings, are unfit to hold the offices they currently demean with their presence in Washington. They and their ungodly sin against the people of America must go and take their awful spin with them!

Jesse Ventura is now governing the fine state of Minnesota, in part, because the good people of that state were sick and tired of politics as usual. High charm and political untruth: SPIN! It is everywhere! Spin did not resonate well in Minnesota. While the outsider may be a bit more candid than we like, at least he is refreshingly honest, or seems to be in all of his frank discussions, while swooning his adoring public. To what end only time will tell. But certainly the wrestler-entertainer turned politician has struck a cord that has put a serious buzz on the nations Capitol.

This unusual phenomenon may not play in every city Mr. Beatty. Hollywood legends beware. Your waning film careers may be very forgettable and deserve a final bow. So a new post in politics may not be for every wrestler. Back to the unforgettable Waco. Were they just a series of convenient blunders or were they well conceived cover-ups? I think we have a right to know. But will Senator Danforth ask the right questions and nail the right cover- ups? We hope he will not become more than a well drafted plan hired to do a half hearted job on getting to the real bottom of the truth.

But here we go again. According to Attorney General Janet Reno, she has been ill informed and is now quietly pointing a long finger at the FBI. The FBI's spokesperson in high monotone claims this wasn't a cover up at all, it was merely an oversight! Yet the truth seems to have a way coming out. It maybe six years later, but here it comes.

Like a dirty freight train rolling out of the past, whistles blowing, an iron potbelly gathering up a good head of steam. Congress is getting angry now, watch out here comes our national check- book! Get ready to blow off a couple of hundred million dollars again, to mend the cover up. "We will discover the truth about the matter, no doubt about it!" explains the fat, red cheeked politician in his worked up rage. He spills his guts out in nickel and dime rhetoric, for exactly 15 minutes, casually checking his wristwatch. Big luncheon today, he can't afford to get too worked up. Maybe the eager lobbyist will even fork over another iron check dipped in honey. His thundering speech brought the house down, all 8 members who bothered to show up in Congress that day. Is the picture clear enough folks?

A fact-finding mission to some exotic port of call, was certainly earned today. This time he will take Stephanie. At 26, its about time that she learns how to play the Washington spin game. Disarm with denial. It's a new art form. No one ever gets hurt! Nothing ever changes, ask the wrong questions, the public really doesn't care anyway. Right!

The Dow is nesting at somewhere around 11,000 and all is okay on the street, at least for today. Dogs are home in their cages. Politicians are busy creating gifted stories of plausible deniability for scandals yet to unfurl. Half- truths are the order of the day. Remember not to forget the Clinton's 11th commandment: the best defense is always a strong offense. Truth really doesn't play a factor in the politics of spin. Damage control is the name of the game.

The Clintons', if they have a legacy, will have made a solid place for themselves in the history books. There should be a marker underneath their picture. The title in big black bold print will read: father of the political art of spin. The examples unfortunately are not just Democratic or Republican. Like a new fad it's in the wind. But where have all the morals gone? More importantly will this disease drip down into our weak and ailing culture? Will it infect young people with notions of presidential sex? Some high schools report oral sex on campus is on the rise. Will spin bang away at our fragile national psyche? Will it change the broad curve on how we present notions of the truth? Will it swing into big cities unnoticed like a plague, crippling honor and decency in every university? Stumble over America's heartland like a Russian Mafia?

Since the old warrior-politicians like Ike, the groundswell of corruption and hidden agenda's in politics has hit new highs. You know the lists and it is a long one: The Bay of Pigs, The Vietnam War, the assignation of President Deim, The Kennedy assignation and grand cover-up, the philandering JFK and his student brother. The Nixon burglary and Watergate cover-up. All the wars and all the billions of your tax dollars for what? Most recently the intervention in the Serbian conflict. All of the Clinton scandals and sub-scandals that have distorted, blamed, spun the truth in the face of facts, in the name of what? No American President has so abused the power of his office in American history.
The most corrupt administration since Hoover. That Hillary would even think of running for any office, should be an outrage! Have the Clinton's no shame? After what these two have put this country through! It only cost the tax- payers several Billions of dollars to discover what they worked so very hard to cover-up the truth! Thanks Bill and Hill for all your loyal service to America. Buy them a cheap unpainted sports car and fill their tank with gas! Tell the driver not to stop until they reach Little Rock. Please.

As long as the American public is sleeping on your watch, the lies and the spin will safely march on into to the new millennium. What a wonderful thing to be remembered for, new truth for the liberated politicians. When the old lies were just too hard to bear, and spin came easy with all the many cover-ups. The horror of spin is that all the corrupt players in the Clinton administration are planning on getting away with their putrid lies and intolerable corruption. It's a right of passage. Like a Mexican President looting his country's treasury. We the people must quickly exercise our vote to put a sudden stop to all of this as soon as possible.

God help us if they have engineered a new Holy Grail in Washington. It will not matter what is right or what is wrong or what is the highest and best policy for this great country of ours. The vision of tomorrow will be replete with greedy politicians, who put their will above the highest and best good of the people. After all wasn't it voters that gave them the right to govern? Politicians. It's like their private third-world country and we are all second class citizens! How easily they diminish their oaths and offices; with greasy pork- barrel politics, little chunks of fat off a taxpayer's tree trunk soon becomes a hollow bone.

When scandals break, so will the hoard of spin-doctors, falling lifeless from heaven like hordes of looting skydivers, they come to cheapen the truth. One armed insurance salesmen, armed with logical nonsensical arguments who know no shame, selling their target audiences anything and everything. Night falls, as they creep out from beneath the baseboard of the kitchen pouring into your living room like a sweet smelling cancer, or a toxic plume. Gently they wade into your tired minds, agreeing with their jaw nodding straw bosses. Skilled craftsmen they sharpen their tools. All is well? Right?

Talk show hosts will invite them to spread their evil lies, in the name of balanced and responsible coverage punching the truth in the face is now an odd art form. Some viewers will listen and be unduly influenced by half-truths, and false accusations. Sweet lies rule.

The art of spin will grace new heights fly to lofty grand dimensions! Others will simply fall asleep under the deep yawn the smell of politics as usual. Unwilling to call for change, the latest polls announces a drum beat. Beaten by their own earned apathy, plastic numbers and people slip and fall into what? Comas! Brain dead pollsters cheer on.

No brave or brazen keystone cops blowing whistles. No fire alarms to end the falling day. A few more million victims lay their rifles down. They give into their own indulgence believing the unbelievable; the slick Washington lawyers. Bathed to sleep by their dull willingness to be ever content. Sitting in their soft brown leather department store reclining chairs, there are car payments, deadly shootings, and dreaming of a better, brighter day.

In the soiled land of the almost free, there are car pools, unread newspapers and buses to line the highways. Workers and managers, Republicans and Democrats and a few Independents who seek shelter in the mortgaged homes that dot the hillsides.

Spin doctors machine-gun angry mobs at crowded supermarkets with bushels of sincere lies, occasionally offering cheap bouquets of wilting flowers, pretending to care about everything and nothing at all here in the land of the week-end warriors on the mud covered banks of the talk-show brave.

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