Zooko Journeyman quoth:

Lest any naive readers who aren't familiar with the details of the event buy this kind of spin-doctoring, please be aware that the woman in question was probably not visible to the sniper, and it is almost certain that he was aiming at her armed husband who was shooting back. The bullet travelled through a door or some such obstruction I think (I forget the details) before hitting the victim.

Zooko, About the best spin that you can put on this is that the agent was trying to shoot (again) the retreating Randy Weaver and showed an utter disregard for the safety of the others in the cabin; who were known to include women and children. This is the point. Not that all Fibbies are demonic baby-killers but that the arrogance of their agency and its government allow them to mark someone--Randy Weaver or even Jim Bell--as 'bad guy' and call out unreasonably huge campaigns against them. Once so marked, the "victim" is then helpless, completely without recourse, the "justice" system by then having been poisoned against them by the Fibbies and the prosecutors. [For those that survive long enough to have an encounter with the justice system.]

You could more reasonably blame the husband for having the stupidity or carelessness to get in a firefight with his wife and child in the building.

I don't find that at all reasonable; since Weaver was on his own property, minding his own business before agents started shooting at him. Yes, I know he was wanted for failure to appear for a court date--that hardly justifies the whole exercise.

More generally, don't buy any of the spin that anonymous cypherpunks (and plenty of named ones) like to put on such stories without reading the more balanced accounts yourself. Anonymous, above, would _like_ you to think of the FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi as a murderous baby-killer who chuckled gleefully when he saw his opportunity to take out a toddler.

Perhaps he didn't chuckle gleefully, but he obviously didn't show much regard for the Weavers' lives either (/before/ Vicky Weaver's death that is). BTW, neither I nor anyone else has accused him of killing a toddler.

Anonymous is no different from hatemongering pamphleteers and propaganda ministers in any penny-ante revolution or Orwellian minitru. Perhaps he's on the side of the good guys, but his tactics have the same stink that I recognize from reading the propaganda blurbs of the bad guys.

Yes, I can see why you would recognize such a smell.