I wrote:
> Chip, have you written up your criticisms of "Waco: Terms of
> Engagement?" Many of us who found that a powerful movie would love to
> see a detailed critique of its arguments.
And Chip wrote:
> Check out the articles linked on the PRA web page:
> http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/waco.html
Chip, of the three documents on that web page, only one deals with the film: Alan Stone's 43 screen article from the Boston Review entitled "Sifting the Ashes." And as far as I can see, his criticisms are mainly in the way of friendly amendments that make the core argument of the film even more plausible. Concerning the hardest to believe assertions, which come near the end of the film -- the heat-film analysis that "showed" the FBI spraying the house with automatic weapons fire during the delivery of the gas; the assertion that FBI gas canisters ignited the gas and caused the fire; and the footage purporting to show a section of the house harboring women and children being injected with gas and crushed by tanks while the people were still in it -- Stone comes to the conclusion that not one of these assertions is impossible, and that there is corroborating evidence for all of them. And he says this even though he personally had concluded the opposite before he saw the film, and published his findings in The Stone Report (which you also offer on your website).
If that's the toughest critique available, I'm forced to conclude that the film is remarkably accurate -- breath-takingly so, considering how outrageous are the charges and how partisan is the approach.
Michael
__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com