Review – Waco: The Rules of Engagement

I find it hard to say exactly which aspect of this mess makes me the maddest. Start with some illegal gun-stockpiling, child-molesting religious nutjob and his compound of followers. Turn the racist, trigger-happy morons of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms loose on them. Then when the ATF bungles it up but good, haul in the FBI to harass the cultists until finally the whole affair disintegrates into a bloodbath. But no, I think the worst part has to be the rotten, lying arrogance of federal law enforcement officials and their cronies in Congress during hearings on the debacle. I was also saddened by just how little of this you have to believe before it starts to stink. Though the documentary struggles with questions about who really set fire to the compound, it doesn’t really matter. Even if we stick strictly to what the feds were caught on tape doing, their conduct was beneath contempt. To be sure, it’s impossible to present an exhaustive examination of all the evidence in two hours and 15 minutes. But this Oscar-nominated documentary does a fine job of covering the major holes in the government’s story. Worth seeing