Waco: Madman or Messiah

Meandering mess with an aimless narrative that finds you losing interest too easily. There is some insight but it's far too loose to be truly gripping.

Wow, this is shockingly fair. Fair as in it doesn't point fingers exclusively at Koresh and it doesn't point fingers exclusively at the ATF and the government. It takes time to cover BOTH sides of the conflict with the same grace and poise.

It's honestly the first Documentary on it that I have seen that doesn't totally blame Koresh. It's the first time that I have seen people come on and actually defend him. Don't get me wrong, he is still a wack job, but this is the first time I've seen anyone offer a defense for him, and a relatively good one.

It leaves you with the feeling that, yeah, they needed to take it down because of child abuse alone, but the ATF over-stepped it's boundaries to the point of violating their rights.

It leaves you with the feeling that both sides were absolutely wrong, and, honestly, you don't often get that with this subject.

I remember this event well, shocking story, and it is good to see a doco like this that sits on the fence (to a point). This doco shows lots of stuff I had not seen before and the interviews with survivors from both sides made this for captivating viewing.

I am a Christian and know the Bible well enough to see and know that David Koresh was a false prophet/messiah, any one that knows or has read the Bible will know that God warns us about wolves in sheeps clothing, and David Koresh was just another one of them. Anyone that follows some one that claims he/she is the second coming of Christ should look at that person and compare them to Jesus, Jesus would not have multiple sexual relationships, Jesus would not drive around in a classic American muscle car, and I can come up with so many other points to show David Koresh was just another conman.

Now besides David Koresh being a fake, it does not take away the FBI/ATF got this completely wrong, they are directly responsible for the murder of many people. Watch Waco: The Rules of Engagement, as that clearly shows that the FBI/ATF murdered many people. Now I get it, the government wanted to check their weapons, check if David Koresh was having relationships with under age girls, and I agree they should have looked into what was happening, but the way they went about their jobs was as bad as you can go about it, causing the death of many children and people that were fooled by a madman, including several government agents.

Overall this 2 part doco is well done and shows both sides of the story. 10 out of 10.

For some reason IMDB shows I gave it a 1, I gave it a 10 out of 10 and is worth watching if you want to see the truth about the madman and the mistakes the FBI/ATF made.

The BBC typically produces pretty high quality documentaries. Unlike Discovery/History Channel, they tend to be more informational, better researched and less sensational.

Waco: Madman or Messiah starts off alright, providing well-corroborated background on the Branch Davidians and David Koresh. However, towards the end of part 1, things start going downhill. It starts with cheesy graphics and music to play up the Seven Seals nonsense that Koresh spouted. But what's really unforgiveable is how, in part 2, they turn a well-documented and heavily investigated event into a subjective, he-said/she-said, "pick your own facts" story.

Air time in part 2 is heavily skewed towards the Branch Davidians and their sympathizers who make multiple false claims. They do also interview a negotiator and a member of the tactical team. However, the false claims made by the Branch Davidians are never addressed, even on key facts like whether the ATF went in guns blazing and would have killed all the women and children if the Branch Davidians hadn't "defended themselves" as the Branch Davidians claim or if the Branch Davidians had shot the ATF first, causing them to return fire as they rescued their injured colleagues (several of whom died).

This is a really well studied and heavily litigated incident. So there would have been tons of evidence based on ballistics, the footage from numerous TV crews, police reports and interviews, etc. But instead of actually figuring out what happened, the BBC chose to leave out all the direct evidence, giving each side equal weight in the program.

They don't even mention the fact that the Brand Davidians started the fire (arson investigators found that the fire started simultaneously in three separate parts of the building, and arson detection dogs alerted to the presence of chemical accelerants at each of these locations). Contemporaneous news reports didn't have access to these facts, but decades later the BBC did and simply chose to conceal it to make their documentary more open-ended.

This whitewashing of the Branch Davidians as harmless religious eccentrics who were innocent victims of jackbooted government thugs is extremely dangerous. The documentary makers know full well how dangerous this is given that they showed footage of Timothy McVeigh, the KKK and other far-right anti-government crazies rallying in support of the Branch Davidians during the siege. But they still chose to promulgate the surviving Branch Davidians' false narrative.

The producers went to great lengths to condemn the Davidians, repeating many of the falsehoods and smears that were used to initiate this debacle in the first place but they also try hard to be sympathetic to the children.

Not once did they seem to seem to question the principle concern with this event - The government invented a reason to raid this group of people and then they shot them and burned them alive and for what?

The government deployed a troop of M2 Bradely Armoured Fighting Vehicles, AFV's against a bunch of families, helicopters, snipers, about a battalion sized element of government agents against a bunch of bible bashing families who appeared to have been no danger to anyone.

About the only genuine crime that seems to have been carried out by Koresh was that he may have had improper relations with teenage girls. Why on earth then was he not arrested and tried before a jury of his peers? When did raiding a property, shooting first, bringing in tanks and burning them all alive become a proportional response?