Well, isn’t this just great. The US Army is going to deploy an active duty unit within the US for one year beginning in October.
The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys.
Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.
Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
And when that year is up it’s expected that another unit will take it’s place so it’s not a temporary program. And if that’s not bad enough, get a load of what they “may” be tasked with doing:
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Of course, this effectively makes them law enforcement which is generally forbidden by the Posse Comitatus Act, but I’m sure we all know what Bush & Company think about American laws after these last eight years. This is the Age of Terrorism! If we don’t surrender our rights freely, the enemy will hate us for it or something like that.
Now, here’s a question.
Obama has already decided to not only keep giving federal funds to “faith-based” groups but to make this program a central part of his presidency and he has also decided that spying on Americans is okay as long as he’s running the program.
Do you think he’ll keep US soldiers on American streets as long as he gets to tell ‘em which streets they’ll be on?
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I guess this is one of those increasingly common cases where the fact that it is against the law doesn’t seem to matter when the laws aren’t being enforced. And yet, it is we atheists who supposedly don’t know how to behave morally!
You should read up on a few things….
Though it was not publicly announced:
“Make no mistake about it: the de-facto repeal of the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) is an ominous assault on American democratic tradition and jurisprudence. The 1878 Act, which reads, “Whoever, except in cases and under circumstances expressly authorized by the Constitution or Act of Congress, willfully uses any part of the Army or Air Force as a posse comitatus or otherwise to execute the laws shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both,” is the only U.S. criminal statute that outlaws military operations directed against the American people under the cover of ‘law enforcement.’ As such, it has been the best protection we’ve had against the power-hungry intentions of an unscrupulous and reckless executive, an executive intent on using force to enforce its will.”
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