Re: Tainted quote

Michael S. Lorrey (mike@lorrey.com)
Mon, 22 Mar 1999 14:42:32 -0500

Steve VanSickle wrote:

> Micheal Lorrey wrote:
>
> >Tim McVeighs crime was NOT that he bombed the building. Any government
> building
> >is a legitimate military target for a dissident insurgency group under
> the
> Laws
> >of War. What was his crime was in setting the bomb off when he KNEW there
> were
> >people in the building who are classified by the Red Cross, the Laws of
> War,
> >and by the UCMJ as non-combatants
>
> If I remember the Laws of Land Warfare correctly, to be considered a
> legitimate insurgency and to be afforded the priveledges of a POW, there
> must exist a well defined command structure, there must be at least
> partial control of some territory, soldiers in combat must wear uniforms
> or some other form of identification, and probably several other criteria
> I don't remember. By those criteria, McVeigh is a common criminal who
> deserves to hang.

well defined command structure:
as an insurgency, the last thing that would keep them viable were if their command structure were publicly known. Just because it might not be publicly known, or even completley known to the entire organization, does not mean there is not one. The cell structure is a well recognized system of structuring an insurgency organization.

control of territory:
this is not well defined. You could say that simply being able to elude capture, thus denying the government's ability to police an area effectively, is at least a measure of control. By your criteria, Thomas Paine was a common criminal.
Considering how much the government likes to govern by poll results, you could call areas where the government has a minority of local support as being under the tentative 'control' of the insurgency.

Must wear uniforms:
I know of no insurgency organization which has ever had more than a small fraction which actually wore what could be considered uniforms. Nor would any of them wear such unifoms in public where they could easily be identified by government agents.

If this were a real criteria, then movements like the PLO, NRA, ANC, Sandinistas, Contras, Zapatistas, Mujahedin, Viet Cong, Chinese democracy movements, as well as the American Revolutionaries would all be nothing but common criminals.

Every movement starts out with nothing. Your criteria are merely the measure of what an insurgency needs to accomplish to have hope of being successful.

What I find so remarkable, and indicative that the government had a hand in it, was a) how handily McVeighs actions neatly castrated the burgeoning militia movement, and 

b) how easily he was caught, the license plate on his care dissapeared.
c) the evidence about John Doe #2
d) the evidence that there were booster charges placed on the basement
structural columns that were of typical BATF training manual construction.

By the way, I also think McVeigh should hang.

Mike Lorrey