Word: koresh
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...when the Branch Davidian compound burned to the ground, a vast majority of Americans assumed that the conduct of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was just, David Koresh was a religious fanatic, and the Branch Davidians were a legitimate threat to the public. But this tale was told from only one perspective...
Waco: The Rules of Engagement thus does what few others did, asking why these people became Branch Davidians. The members become people who made rational choices rather than blind, impersonal drones who followed Koresh. A portion of the film even documents the history of the Branch Davidians, showing it to be not a cult, but a more established religion. The documentary is most balanced in these passages, treating these people fairly and with sufficient compassion...
...film even dares to have sympathy for the vilified Koresh. The film first presents him ambiguously, quoting Biblical passages. Part of this sympathy may be due to the means of attaining footage. Since the footage largely came from the Branch Davidians themselves, Koresh may have censored it. But that which Gazecki retains shows Koresh as a complex man, far from the villain portrayed by the media...
...Manson noted at his hearing, "they're way behind the times." But cult experts disagree. What happened in San Diego, they say, was unprecedented. James Tabor, who teaches religion at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and was involved in the last desperate attempts to communicate with David Koresh by radio broadcast, says, "This group is completely different. These people rather calmly followed suicide as their exit, in a very positive way, to a higher level of existence. They define death not as the enemy of life but as life itself." United Methodist minister J. Gordon Melton, editor...
...bungled the 1993 standoff in Waco. Monday, Magaw said: "I believe that had we been left in charge of the Waco incident, we would not have burned that building." Tuesday, after a talking-to by Janet Reno and FBI director Louis Freeh: "I need to make perfectly clear David Koresh, not Attorney General Reno or the FBI, was responsible for the fire...