re: #168 avanti

I just posted the same story, but was unaware US troops were used at Waco. Are you sure they were ?

Yes, they were:

As part of the planning for the Waco raid, BATF went to the Joint Task Force Six (JTF-6), which covers Texas, and asked for training, medical, communications, and other support. The JTF-6 staff explained that they could only be involved if the case were a drug case.[24] If the case were not a drug case, BATF could obtain assistance from other parts of the military, but would have to pay for it.(p.625)

Immediately thereafter, BATF asserted that the Waco case was a drug investigation; Branch Davidian prophet David Koresh was supposedly running a methamphetamine laboratory.[25] The military should have known that the drug claim was merely a guise; BATF came up with the allegation only after being told of the benefits of such an allegation. In addition, the military prepared a memorandum for BATF on methamphetamine labs, and the precautions essential for dealing with such a lab.[26] However, when the paper was presented to BATF agents, they openly ignored the information in front of the soldiers who prepared it.[27] Further, agents from the civilian Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) who were assisting BATF also expressed no concerns about how BATF was addressing the risks of a meth lab in its operational planning, which similarly should have indicated to the military that the allegation was a mere pretext.[28]

With this knowledge, JTF-6 signed onto the mission of “training a National Level Response Team [BATF strike-force] for Counter Drug operations,” in “Support of BATF Takedown of Meth Lab.”[29] According to documents received from the U.S. Special Operations Command under Freedom of Information Act requests, the Joint Training operation (JT002-93) was approved due to a request from BATF dated February 2, 1993, requesting U.S. and Texas National Guard assistance in serving a federal search warrant “to a dangerous extremist organization believed to be producing methamphetamine.”[30] The Army assistance at Waco would supposedly be “in direct support of interdiction activities along the southwest border.”[31] (Notwithstanding the fact that Waco is approximately 300 miles from the southwest border. Moreover, the original claim was that Koresh was manufacturing methamphetamine, not that he was importing it from Mexico.)(p.626)