Letter: Making Koresh a hero is ridiculous

Sunday, Sept. 5, 1999 | 10:24 a.m.

In the past few years I have seen the rabidly anti-communist Republican Party support a Communist dictator over its own country (Milosevic of Yugoslavia) in a military conflict.

If that isn't enough I have also seen the self-proclaimed "tough on crime" GOP defending a mass killer of law enforcement personnel (David Koresh), again going against their own government.

A lot of people, especially in the media, seem to have forgotten the details of Waco while trying to discredit the federal government for not mentioning federal agents fired two pyrotechnic devices six hours before the fire started in the compound at a building several yards outside the compound.

To shed a ray of truth into this morass of "gotcha politics," it was Koresh who refused to obey a search warrant and ordered his followers to fire on Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents attempting forceful entry, killing four of them (which made him a mass murderer).

Also, if you discount the right-wing rhetorical fog and look at only the real evidence you see that Koresh definitely ordered the fire set (tapes actually recorded the conversation among cult members about setting the fires).

Koresh was an evil man and describing him as "religious" or "Christian" does not make his activities less evil nor does it excuse his actions.

He brought everything that happened to him on his followers and on himself; to try to make him a hero or martyr is simply ridiculous.

DANIEL OLIVIER