If anyone needs near cherry top of the line VHS tape, I have hundreds. Recorded once. Entire seasons of Xena Warrior Princess and other shows it turns out I never ever watched. And never will.
Unmarked tapes may have SNL or grainy porn from unpaid cable. I sure don't know.
I set all my VHS tapes out on the street years ago. Someone picked them up. Might have been the garbage guys. Might have been a troglodyte. Might have been a troglodyte garbage man.
When a friends father passed away they found "The Collection" which was about 20 VHS tapes of many episodes of Gunsmoke. It included the original episode that had John Wayne introducing the new show. Seems they wanted the Duke to play the marshal but he said he was too old and recommended James Arness. They really didn't want Arness to be in movies because nobody wanted to look "up" to him! Including the Duke! Since I still had a VHS player they gave them to me!
I had a chance to watch the mini-series. I had also watched the 2 part mini-series done by A&E. Talk about 2 different stories!
A&E's was part of a group of shows about infamous crazy people. Folks like Jim Jones, etc. Perhaps David Koresh deserves to be put into that bin, but I think A&E tried to play on that aspect more, and less on how things went so wrong at the compound. In contrast, they showed the FBI/ATF to be justified in what they did there. The Branch Davidian's were portrayed more as a cult bent on mass suicide. They showed the Branch Davidian's rigging their compound to burn and setting it on fire.
The 6 part series that this thread was started with had twice the time devoted to it, so was able to develop the characters and story much more. First, it was a much better, more interesting story. The characters from the government, as well as the Branch Davidian's were developed. In this series, the government is shown to be heavy handed, and intolerant of those they don't understand. Probably much closer to the truth IMO. Honestly, this seemed to be a story of what happens when followers of two Gods clash. I'm not convinced either was following a true God, but that's not required for the believers to believe it. Sadly, we see that the God of the state, is not terribly benevolent, or forgiving of those that don't follow. This series has the government causing the fire when they push tanks through the walls to tear gas them, and knock over lanterns inside. They do have a discussion about how the source of the fire is a point of controversy, with the "official" story being that they torched themselves, but that there is no evidence to support this. They also gave a long list of examples where the government used tear gas resulting in fire and death, and pointed out that nothing was done to deal with this eventuality. This certainly goes along with my recollection of these events. It was also made clear that Janet Reno, and President Clinton were involved in the decision to go in with the tanks. It was hard to watch this series without feeling anger toward our government.
This was well worth the time to watch it. Glad it was mentioned here. Search it out if you missed it.
I think the series is about as impartial as it can be. It's based on 2 books, one written by a Branch Davidian survivor and the other written by the FBI negotiator. So it has both viewpoints.
March 17, 2018 Waco: The Untold Story By David T. Hardy
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Waco atrocity, the bloodiest and most expensive law enforcement operation in the history of the United States. The gun battle, siege, and lethal fire have already been the subject of three commemorative documentaries and docudramas on the subject, with more to come. The sad fact is that the documentaries to date contain major errors. I know this because I spent three years in Freedom of Information Act lawsuits in a quest for the truth.
The 1993 operation was begun by the then-Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and directed at a religious group sometimes called the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh. The basis for the raid was flimsy evidence that the Davidians possessed unregistered machine guns. On February 28, eighty agents, backed by three borrowed military helicopters, tried to storm the Branch Davidian center near Waco, Texas. Shooting broke out that left four agents and six Davidians dead and led to a 51-day siege. The siege in turn ended with a fire that killed more than 80 additional people.
There were, of course, official investigations and congressional hearings. The documentary films released to date largely parallel the government's "official line" voiced during these. David Koresh was a government-hating fire-eater, he could not be arrested peacefully, and the fanatic Davidians raked the approaching agents with machine-gun fire.
The FOIA lawsuit turned up evidence contradicting all of this. Just to take three major points:
..ding ding ding..exactly Ebutch..been saying that for a very long time...even more so in the last eight years and now.....they're all running scared like a bunch of little school girls that snuck into the Saturday matinee and saw a horror movie for the first time...yeah they're so so corrupt and have been for a very long time....they don't want to be apprehended and held accountable....they'd rather be still seen as pure and all good...for the benefit of this country and to " we the people"...yeah i still smell BS...they're all setting themselves up with the Globalists/New World Order and their Socialism......heck, they're the modern version of the Nazi Party and how they were in Germany and Europe before and during WW2..wakey wakey,people...we forget history..we're doomed to repeat it...just like what's been going on and going on right now......sad and pathetic.LT