This is high up on the list. This is your federal government at work horning into law enforcement that has always been a local concern. I talked to several sheriffs, policemen and prosecutors as to how they would have handled this situation. Most said that they would have had David Koresh arrested when he was out jogging rather than bringing in a full scale military siege an assault.

Local law enforcement is accountable later to the local voters. The federal authorites are accountable to nobody exccept some facesless bureacrats in Washington.

There are really two groups who you can't negotiate with: 1) the federal government, and 2) religious whackos. That's why this confrontation was doomed from the beginning. In general it's a really bad idea to have an armed "standoff" with the authorities, no matter what your beliefs.

Janet Reno.

there was this priest who had automatic guns liker over 125 of them and the government needed to confescate them because they are illegal. The government had a shoot out with the people in the church. Afffter that they tried to peacemake so they would give them the guns easily but they didn't cooperate. After trying so many times to get the guns they finally called so machines to put tear gas in the building but while doing this a fire started, the fire becames so big because tgere was a lot of wind that day, over 75 people dided 30 of them or more were children

A bunch of cultist kooks get killed when the police screws up and burns down their fortress. Hardly a tragedy. The government needs to crack-down harder on cults and terrorists-regardless of their religion or skin color. The only tragedy about Waco is that the operation was botched (they should have simply nabbed Koresh earlier, or waited and starved them out). As a result, 'Waco' has became a weird obsession for militia/survivalist kooks; apparently it inspired the Oklahoma City bombings.

I'm a little stunned by some of the commentary on this string. The real story here isn't about the children who died although it is part of the tragic story. It is about a huge blunder on the part of government officials, resulting in scores of innocent lives being lost, in a fire set (probably) by their leader, and the lack of press outrage and the temporary suspension of the blame game while they circled the wagons. Drummond, inferring a racist preoccupation on the American people over this situation is shameful. David Koresh caused this tragedy, he was primarily responsible for the deaths of nearly all of his followers. They weren't very bright but they did not deserve to be incinerated. This was also government incompetence at its worst, with tragic results. Imagine if a tragedy like this could somehow be attributed to John Ashcroft, the resultant rioting in the streets by the press corps. Somehow, it was acceptable if the AG were one from a democrat administration. Americans (with the exception of what, at the time, was a very liberal press, prior to the advancement of FoxNews and the blogosphere) were aghast that such a catastrophe could take place and were hesitant to believe that their government could be so incompetent, only to find out later that, sure enough, it was. All involved should have been discharged from government service. Very few (including Reno) were.

Had the effect of dividing America. Showed the authorities that mainstream America doesn't want white people treated the same way as the Black Panthers or SLA, no matter how crazy they get.

On a list with all these other horrible events it really doesn't compare. I would like to know where all these whiney civil libertarians who cry incessantly about Gitmo and Abu Graib were when the Federal Government was cooking little children in Texas on Clinton's watch.

Those children did not deserve to die, but remember, It was their own parents and David Koresh that killed them, not the government! David Koresh set fire to his own house, not the FBI.

Another tragic event, but not what I consider to be a national tragedy, as such. I do give an extra star for the children.

The FBI could've handled this better. But what do you expect from them? The Waco tragedy wasn't Janet Reno's fault. It was David Koresh's fault to begin with.

What was the tragedy, they had ample time to come out and thing started to happen. If the wackos at Waco had come out in the first place there would have be no problems. The fact that they were criminals seems to be forgotten. It is very sad that children were killed but there parents had put them in harms way even before law enforcement showed up.

I was just a child when this happened but I remember peering over the kitchen table and seeing it in the newspaper over my dad's shoulder. I stared at the pictures of the many children for a long time and I remember just crying my eyes out for all for them. Since then I have read and watched many things on this and it still haunts me. Whose fault it was really doesn't matter to me...it was still a tragedy nonetheless.

I guess I am a real insensitive Yankee. I never considered this a tragedy. When the Feds tell a bunch of zealots to come out and they don't, then s#$@ happens. Apologists wanted to turn this into some civil rights/religous thing. . .but no one ever wins in a standoff against the law. In my neighborhood, you expected the worst if you didn't come out when the cops said so. . . A very minor blip on the radar compared to other tragedies in this nation.

Bill Clinton's AG Janet Reno decided to burn down this building with women and children inside is a crime. Ashcroft is a pussy cat compared to Reno. Remember Elian Gonzalez and her armed raid to steal the boy and send him back to Stalinist Cuba.