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Over the past few days I've seen a number of articles talking about surges of troops in Iraq and military forces on U.S. streets.
Brigade Homeland Tour Starts Oct. 1. Gina Cavallaro. Army Times: September 30th, 2008.
The US Army is going to go "on tour" in the Homeland looking for terrorists (this means protesters). Their new weaponry is designed to "subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them," the Army says. "They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and package fielded". "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 package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic, shields and batons, beanbag bullets, etc. Notice how the article only briefly mentions "crowd control" and drowns this out with threats of "chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear...." and other mushroom-cloud type words.
Invasion of the Sea Smurfs. Amy Goodman. Truth Dig: October 1st, 2008.
Referring to the previous article, Amy Goodman begins investigating because no one else seems to notice. The Army's Consequence Management Response Force - nicknamed "sea smurf" - have patrolled the hard streets of Iraq, but will now be called upon to patrol U.S. streets for disasters and protests. Goodman writes, "The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 ... included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to 'restore public order' or to suppress 'any insurrection.'" Amy Goodman relates the surge in domestic security to the perceived threat of protests due to the crisis on Wall Street. But there may be other uses, as the next article explains.
Nearly 10,000 headed from Fort Lewis to Iraq, Pentagon announce plan to deploy total of 26,000. Scott Fontaine. Olympian: October 1st, 2008.
"All told, the U.S. military is planning deployments of about 26,000 troops and would maintain 14 combat brigades in Iraq from about February to early fall 2009... Nearly 10,000 troops from Fort Lewis will head to Iraq next year, when the post's commanding general and the rest of I Corps take over daily operations in the country and two Stryker brigades fall under its command."
10 Days That Shook Olympia. Peter Bohmer. Counter Punch: November 17th, 2007.
This article outlines the sequence of events and the fervor of the Port Militarization Resistance movement in the Pacific Northwest. In Olympia, WA ten days of non-stop protesting prevented military munitions and Stryker vehicle to be transported through the Port of Olympia. At one point in the week, the protest held the port out of police or military control for 18 straight hours, blocking roads and access to the port. Their goal was to contain the military equipment inside holding stalls and send a message to the rest of the country that this war should have been stopped already. I was there early that week and created this propaganda video about it.
7 comments:
It's sad that we have something like fifteen divisions in Iraq. After we took Bagdhad, we should have either invaded Iran or reduced levels to 10,000 and put our puppet in charge (as a dictator) whether he was popular or not.
Say what you want about democracy, but there's no way we should have had a hundred thousand soldiers occupying a country.
A single division could have responded to and put down any insurgencies that formed from a base near Basrah or Kuwait.
I read an article of Michel Chossudovsky about it in globalresearch.ca
rook,
The details of occupation aside, I don't think the U.S. should occupy any country
lastochka,
I'm still trying to find that article, try linking directly to it.
Thanks for visiting
Sometimes people ask :"Why americans don't protest if they are not agree with the politicians from the White House?" I answer: "It's not like that. American authorities won't show you this on TV every day just sometimes, for example, like now, during election race." So, the only way to know what's happening in USA and Europe is to learn foreign languages and to search the necessary info by yourself in independent media sources.
Sorry, my previous link was invalid.
here is thissm article
To say that the USA should not occupy another country under any circumstance is silly. We occupied Afghanistan to hunt for Osama Bin Laden and no one seemed to mind then.
J-J-J-J-JINGOISM. We should have invaded Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Syria, and Yemen and forced Turkey, Pakistan, and Egypt to join this Superstate under one secular (absolutist) government friendly to the USA, and been out by 2004 with only a few divisions left behind to help with putting down insurrections.
India has over a hundred million Muslims, but they're not pouring out of that country and bombing embassies. If the goal was to combat terrorism, the key to doing so is creating a single state that can defend itself effectively and create wealth for its people so that they don't become terrorists.
Instead, our bullshit about WMDs and Spreading Democracy and Freedom left the job unfinished and extremely counter productive.
rook,
you're a mercenary for the U.S.A., I should have known.
I have no sympathy for the super-statist and nationalist bullshit I just read on my blog. The number of Muslims in India has what to do with anything - your argument?
The US has its dirty finger everywhere, why are you a part of that?
You can call me what you want, I call myself a radical moderate. Conservatives call me a liberal, liberals call me a conservative. A look at my blog shows that I am no fan of the United States.
The point I made about Muslims was clear. Don't try to recognize patterns of rhetoric that are not there. I said quite plainly that there are millions of Muslims living in peace where there is wealth and opportunity, and if we actually wanted to combat Muslim extremism we'd have done better to create a state that could provide wealth and opportunity so that terrorism would fall away.
Instead of adopting pandering rhetoric, why not choose the power of Reason instead?
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