Word: atf
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Waco works hard to humanize the Branch Davidians, but spends most of its energies condemning the behavior of the ATF. Conspiracies abound as the film jumps from one facet of the conflict to another. This non-linear progression highlights the worst errors of the ATF...
According to the film, the use of the media plays a significant role in the agency's behaviors. The film shows the raid to be more of a publicity stunt than a necessary action. The film is unflinching in its characterization of the ATF as a rogue agency that used the Waco standoff to create an appearance of legitimacy through semantics. What would normally be considered "inventory" became "stockpiles." A "sect" became a "cult." Since the documentary is itself a form of the media, it shows a great deal of interest in the manipulation and withholding of this information...
...Gazecki, the greatest crime by the ATF is misrepresentation of the Branch Davidians and of its own motives. The ATF claimed that the raid on the compound was an anti-drug raid, despite evidence to the contrary. The film goes to great lengths and largely succeeds in laying bare the false intentions of the ATF...
With the exception of the treatment of media affairs, the documentary best indicts the ATF through indirect questions for which it has no concrete answers. Waco picks apart disparate bits of information and uses them to bring about logical conclusions. For example, why didn't the Davidians, despite their mass of weapons and knowledge of the raid, immediately bomb the ATF's forces? If the Davidians were the aggressors, why were most of the bullet holes inverted, suggesting the contrary...
...film uses a variety of sources, even bringing in disturbing autopsy footage to suggest other breaches by the ATF. The film becomes jarring and shocking at these points, usually credits for a film. Yet this shock value obscures some of the facts of the case. The mass suicide by the Branch Davidians is insufficiently covered. The gratuitous use of graphic images disgusts the viewer, implying that the ATF was automatically complicit simply because the Davidians died so gruesomely...