The tanks were from Fort Hood, the Army's Fort Bragg-based Combat Applications Group(Aka Delta Force ) was involved in the assault . It doesn't impress me that civilians commanded militrary as some kind of clever way to get around Posse Comitatus.


Incendiary tear gas cartridges :

From the Washington Compost :

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The day after the FBI acknowledged that its agents fired "a very limited number" of potentially incendiary tear gas cartridges during the final assault on the Branch Davidian compound, where 76 people died, Reno described herself as "very, very troubled" and "very, very upset" by the revelation. She promised a thorough investigation of the incident and the six years of denials about the types of munitions that were used. She vowed to "pursue it until I get to the truth."

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The M651 military tear gas cartridges that the FBI now acknowledges using at Waco usually are made of aluminum or some other hard metal and contain CS in a solid form. After they are fired from a grenade launcher, a fuse inside the cartridge ignites and begins turning the solid material into a gas that escapes through a vent in the bottom of the cartridge.

According to Charles Cutshaw, an editor of Jane's Defence Information and an expert on this kind of weapon, these military tear gas cartridges are not intended to start fires. He said he was not aware of any studies or reports on how often such cartridges may have caused fires.

Cutshaw said a photograph of one of the spent military cartridges at Waco showed that the surface was not scorched or blistered, suggesting that the cartridge did not become hot enough to ignite a fire. "But let's presume that instead of landing on a hard surface, it landed in a pile of hay. Then I can assure you it would start a fire. If it was fired into a closed space with fuel fumes, say, from gasoline, it could start a fire. In fact, it could cause an explosion. Without knowing further details, I can't tell you whether that round started a fire at Waco."

Rogers, the agent who gave the authorization to use the military rounds, also was the Hostage Rescue Team commander during an earlier siege against white separatist Randy Weaver in August 1992 in Ruby Ridge, Idaho, in which Weaver's wife, Vicki, was shot and killed by an FBI sniper. "Rules of engagement" drafted by Rogers, which allowed agents to shoot armed suspects on sight, were later deemed illegal by a Justice Department task force. As a result of his role at Ruby Ridge, Rogers was issued a 10-day suspension in 1995 and voluntarily accepted reassignment to a non-tactical management job. He has since retired from the bureau.

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In the Waco Siege, CS was dissolved in the organic solvent dichloromethane (also known as methylene chloride). The solution was dispersed as an aerosol via explosive force and when the highly volatile dichloromethane evaporated, CS crystals precipitated and formed a fine dispersion in the air

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CS gas - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Use of CS gas canisters was later banned ,even in war, by the 1997 International Chemical Weapons Convention.

I already described the details of the death of the 4 ATF agents (former Clintoon body guards ) . Though the U.S. government has always claimed that the Davidians fired the first shots, even the FBI concluded in its report Project Megiddo that the ATF provoked the Davidians: “The violent tendencies of dangerous cults can be classified into two general categories — defensive violence and offensive violence. Defensive violence is utilized by cults to defend a compound or enclave that was created specifically to eliminate most contact with the dominant culture. The 1993 clash in Waco, Texas at the Branch Davidian complex is an illustration of such defensive violence. History has shown that groups that seek to withdraw from the dominant culture seldom act on their beliefs that the endtime has come unless provoked.”
The facts are that Koresh volunteered to allow the government to come in and inspect his weapons. Also Koresh went into Waco often and even jogged outside the compound. The government could easily arrest or detain him if that was their goal. But their goal was to crush them ;and they took out many women and children in the attempt.
You do realize that this massacre is on par with Wounded Knee ;especially in the ratio of women and children killed compared to men.