Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Kosh on December 03, 2008, 03:59:05 am
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27989275/
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.
There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.
Is this even legal?
Maybe the conspiracy theorists will get something right for once.......
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Yeah, I wouldn't think this is exactly legal under Posse Comitatus. But they could probably get around it by essentially labelling them as National Guard or some such.
Which is actually a good question. Is the national guard not considered part of the military and as such cannot be used for law enforcement under Posse Comitatus?
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Which is actually a good question. Is the national guard not considered part of the military and as such cannot be used for law enforcement under Posse Comitatus?
They're reservists, I think.
I think the timing of this is kind of interesting. They just happen to start doing this while in the middle of a major economic crisis that is expected to get worse......
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Posse Comitatus refers to a limitation on the government preventing them from using the military to enforce state laws on state property. (If it's on federal property, then it's OK.)
That law would probably place 20,000 regular troops on standby inside the country. Because they wouldn't technically be doing anything, then it's legal.
If there was an NBC attack, the first thing the government would do is declare a state of emergency. That would temporarily prevend the exercise of almost all the civil liberties of citizens immediately, up to and possibly including a suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus and the Posse Comitatus / Insurrection Acts. That would allow the national government to use the military as a police force to maintain public order.
My opinion: I'm not a huge fan of it, but the government is completely within its rights on this one, to my knowledge, at least.
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Technically we've already had the same sort of troops ready to deploy for a very similar situation (biological warfare) for much longer. There are only two agencies in the United States with the training, faculties, and equipment to handle a biological situation: USAMRIID and the CDC, so this is nothing new. In fact, I wouldn't be too surprised if USAMRIID and its sister-department, USAMRICD, were part of that training procedure.
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That's pretty much like what is already happening here in Italy: the government led the military to deploy 3,000 troops to help police officers with security matters.
The point is, what is the population going to think? Here people are feeling a bit safer but Americans might have a different reaction(especially after the recent threats from Al Qaeda)...
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Just so long as I don't have to quarter them in my home. Respect the Third Amendment!
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Yeah, we should have a force to defend the country, to guard the nation, to secure the homeland...
Too bad we don't have anything to fit those roles already. Send in the active duty troops!
:blah:
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Nothing that the US is doing overtly will stop another terrorist attack. Sending a bunch of (no offense military ppl) grunts to do policemens jobs is a remarkable and illegal theatrical performance, but it still doesn't help. And honestly, you'd think we could be at least as smart as Thailand - our military shouldn't become politicized, that would be . . . very bad.
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I don't see that it's massively different than your standard troop deployment on domestic bases; it's just that they're organizing specific training for specific units allocated for disaster response. If some sort of attack or natural disaster did occur, you'd want a decent-sized force that was already prepared to handle it. So long as the troops aren't participating in any conventional law enforcement duties, I don't see how the eroding-civil-liberties argument is anything more than fearmongering.
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Yeah, we should have a force to defend the country, to guard the nation, to secure the homeland...
Who do you expect to be invaded by ?
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I don't see that it's massively different than your standard troop deployment on domestic bases; it's just that they're organizing specific training for specific units allocated for disaster response. If some sort of attack or natural disaster did occur, you'd want a decent-sized force that was already prepared to handle it. So long as the troops aren't participating in any conventional law enforcement duties, I don't see how the eroding-civil-liberties argument is anything more than fearmongering.
This is correct. As I mentioned, in a biological warfare case, there are only two institutions currently qualified to handle this: United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The military arm has been around for quite a long time (since the 50's) and has even been showcased in books like The Hot Zone or (incorrectly portrayed) in movies like Outbreak (loosely based on The Hot Zone). This is due to the extremely specialized nature of the diseases in question and knowledge required to handle them, the cost of equipment required to isolate, diagnose, quarantine, and protect adequately (Bio-Safety Level 4 research is not cheap; my local hospital university is still trying to acquire funding to create its own BSL4 lab), and so forth.
Biological warfare is a legitimate terrorist concern. Likewise, you have the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense which has a similar responsibility, but on the chemical warfare front.
To answer the general fear that this is somehow violating laws, here's a Q&A period from one of the previous directors of the CDC, Dr. Frederick A. Murphy:
Q: There are a number of issues concerning the response to an epidemic raised by both "The Hot Zone" and "Outbreak". How well did these describe the interaction of the various agencies?
A: The movie Outbreak created some false impressions. The law in our country gives the responsibility for epidemic management to state health departments, with these agencies calling the CDC when they need help. CDC has no authority to go into a state except by invitation. The Army could be called in by a state health department, but to my knowledge this never has happened.
In the Reston incident, the Virginia Health department and the CDC took over the human health side of the episode and the Army, at the request of the monkey import company, took over the animal side. It turned out after lots of surveillance of animal caretakers and their families that there was no human disease, but there was plenty of monkey disease. The Army's role involved depopulating the monkey colony. So the movie Outbreak, where the Army takes over, is rather fictional.
Source: http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/interview_murphy.php (http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/interview_murphy.php)
You need experts with the budget to handle necessary concerns. State governments typically do not have the resources or capabilities to deal with nuclear fallout, chemical or biological warfare, etc.
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I think when we recall our troops, we should disband their units and discharge them. Then they can help with the unemployment crisis. That's a far better solution than training them to deal with attacks that I'm still in denial about.
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Yeah, we should have a force to defend the country, to guard the nation, to secure the homeland...
Who do you expect to be invaded by ?
Wasn't that said in the article?
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I think when we recall our troops, we should disband their units and discharge them. Then they can help with the unemployment crisis. That's a far better solution than training them to deal with attacks that I'm still in denial about.
You DO realize that US Army employs about 1,080,000, the Navy 332,000, the Marines 194,000, the Air Force 239,000, and the National Guard 567,000? The military as a whole is the largest employer in the USA. Removing many from service will just flood the economy with unemployed people yet again--similar to what happened with the post-WWI recession. At a bad time such as now, I think it would be a bad idea to remove units from service. And also realize that every member of the US military signed up or stayed on knowing that deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan were possibilities, and very likely.
Anyways--I think that the move is neither good nor bad. The need is definitely there--a chemical attack can cause a lot of damage.
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Mr. Beefcake, I think, was being very sarcastic. :)
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You DO realize that US Army employs about 1,080,000
I thought we used an army of one.
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I don't see that it's massively different than your standard troop deployment on domestic bases;
(http://msnbcmedia3.msn.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Photo/_new/081201-security-hlrg-330a.hlarge.jpg)
The difference being they aren't standing around on everyday street corners with fully loaded automatic weapons.
it's just that they're organizing specific training for specific units allocated for disaster response.
From a different article: (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/)
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.
The second part is understandable, but the first part sounds more like policing.
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The National Guard has always been on call for civil unrest and crowd control. Still nothing new.
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The National Guard has always been on call for civil unrest and crowd control. Still nothing new.
Aren't these guys regular Army?
Plus, Bush took control of the National Guard two years ago (http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/)
Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder.
Now that was something new.
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The difference being they aren't standing around on everyday street corners with fully loaded automatic weapons.
I'd like to see your source that states they'll be patrolling within the cities with full war gear on federal authority only. Your attempt to take the standard 'federal assets at the disposal of state and city government in cases of emergency' and turn it into some martial law paranoia theory is nauseating.
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.
The second part is understandable, but the first part sounds more like policing.
You mean like the Katrina aftermath? Sometimes the local police is not only inadequate for the job of End TimesTM disasters, but they're the ones causing the crime. This is when you call in some people from the executive branch trained to keep their heads with End TimesTM going off all around them. It's not new at all. It's just we (state and city government) rarely ever use it because the majority of the time the police aren't crack lords and aren't facing something like the entire city being under water.
Hell, with the police being able to storm your house guns blazing without declaring a warrant prior to exploding my door *LEGALLY*, I think a medical APC requested by the local government driving over my car after a dirty nuke goes off at the public park is acceptable.
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PL 109-364 was repealed in the year 2008: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-4986 (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-4986)
Sec. 1068. Repeal of provisions in section 1076 of Public Law 109-364 relating to use of Armed Forces in major public emergencies.
Bush certainly invoked it quite a bit during his presidency, didn't he? I jest.
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You mean like the Katrina aftermath?
A.) That was the National Guard and B.) that was a special request. You don't see any of those guys in New Orleans anymore, do you?
I'd like to see your source that states they'll be patrolling within the cities with full war gear
A picture speaks a thousand words.
on federal authority only.
Nor did I say that.
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A picture speaks a thousand words.
:blah:
I thought we all knew that in the digital age, a picture of a sexy Hollywood celebrity can be morphed into a fat girl and passed as plausible?
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A.) That was the National Guard and B.) that was a special request. You don't see any of those guys in New Orleans anymore, do you?
So it's okay to request the unspecialized Special Olympics Army, but it's not okay to request specialized Professional Standing Army?
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Because the specialized professional standing army is specialized in killing and destroying. We've seen how good they are at policing in Iraq......
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I understand there can be a certain - paranoia - that can be developed when reading the media, since they are paid to write stories based upon the keywords of *impact* and *conflict*. I know, I was a journalism major while in college for a bit of time. But you can't jump on that bandwagon. That's what they want you to do, because it sells their stories.
If you spend a couple years studying how police states are formed, you'll realize that the patterns you're trying to look for are not the same ones that identify the rise to power of said states. I recommend reading peer-reviewed books such as Revolution and Genocide by Robert & Melson.
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Because the specialized professional standing army is specialized in killing and destroying.
So is the National Guard.
So, if a Governor has a dirty nuke go off in his state and does not have the assets at his disposal, yet there's a military unit trained specifically to deal with the dirty nuke and they can deploy within the hour, he can't use them... because they also happen to fight wars?
How would a leader announce that sort of thing to the thousands of people dying of radiation poisoning? "I'm sorry, but we can't request help because they might have killed someone in a war"?
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All the people who think all an army can do is fight in wars are forgetting that we're not supposed to have wars for the hell of it.
Armies don't exist to fight in wars, they exist to protect their nation. If that involves anti-terrorism and policing action inside its own borders, then by all means, train for it and do it.
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The difference being they aren't standing around on everyday street corners with fully loaded automatic weapons.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the caption on that particular image stated that it was taken in 2003, when there was a specific instance of a credible threat against New York City. (The caption gets the alert levels wrong, as well.) I'm not a New Yorker myself, but I'd doubt that you'd see guards stationed there on a daily basis under normal circumstances. What's more, those were National Guard units, who have been serving in roles such as augmenting airport security for some time now.
From a different article: (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/)
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.
The second part is understandable, but the first part sounds more like policing.
Correct me if I'm wrong again, but that quote sounds to me as if both parts are referring to the eventuality of some sort of attack or catastrophe, or at the very least, that the first part would be tangentially related to an event along those lines. I see nothing to suggest that active soldiers would be taking the place of SWAT units at a local protest.
A.) That was the National Guard and B.) that was a special request. You don't see any of those guys in New Orleans anymore, do you?
Actually, as the very article (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/) you linked mentioned, several active-duty units were called in after Katrina.
Really, I think we all have enough issues regarding civil liberties to worry about without having to invent additional hypotheticals.
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Ok, I concede to your points.