re: this

from Mendel
[1] Mike, I had a close look at that van, because the "rebuttal" video made much of it; but the van that was shot had what looks like white paint on the roof (to keep off the heat, I presume), and the one that appears earlier doesn't.

[2] (Oh, and I'd love to see the result of a weapon seizure like that carried out on any suburb of a Texas town. )
1. I've been stuck at home for the last couple of days (Net access via dialup), so I didn't have a chance to look at the long video. So, the bottom line is that we don't know where the white-roof van was before it appears in the video, except for the witness who stated it was eyes-on when the shooting began.

2. I wouldn't "love to see" a weapons sweep in either TX or MI. Such a sweep of the Northern Michigan county where I live would produce a lot of weapons. BUT, in both MI and TX, the weapons would likely be at most semi-automatics (civilian) vs. automatic (military). If you did the same thing south of the TX border, you would probably find some automatic weapons. Not to make too big a point of that since our forefathers in WWI and WWII managed considerable havoc with bolt action and semi-automatic rifles.

The points, of course, are (1) refutation of the "eyewitnesses" who claimed the neighborhood was unarmed and peaceful; and (2) that weapons were used by insurgents in the neighborhood before, during and after the 2007 clear operation.

Regards

Mike