[DokterBeefcake]

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.

[Bluecap]

PL 109-364 was repealed in the year 2008: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-4986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.

[Kosh]

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.

[Bluecap]

A picture speaks a thousand words.

 

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?

[DokterBeefcake]

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?

[Kosh]

Because the specialized professional standing army is specialized in killing and destroying. We've seen how good they are at policing in Iraq......

[Bluecap]

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.

[DokterBeefcake]

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"?

[Polpolion]

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.

[Mongoose]

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:

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 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.

[Kosh]

Ok, I concede to your points.