Why has an Army Brigade Been Assigned to Patrol “the Homeland?”

Today I received an e-mail from the American Freedom Campaign (AFC), an organization founded by several prominent liberals, including Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America. Among the list of official supporters of the AFC are Amnesty International and the Center for Constitutional Rights. The AFC e-mail I received alerted me to an unprecentented order by George W. Bush that for the first time in history has assigned an army combat brigade to deal with emergencies and insurrections on U.S. soil.

From Army Times:

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…

snip

…this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.

After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.

What are these soldiers going to be doing now that they are officially under the command of NorthCom? They will be trained to use newly developed “nonlethal” weapons like the ones we heard about before the Democratic Convention in Denver.

…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.

Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose.

“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”

The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.

Isn’t it illegal for Soldier to be turned against American citizens? It used to be? But when Congress passed the Military Commissions Act in 2006, they not only allowed Bush to make torture legal, they also permitted him to repeal Posse Comitatus and revise the Insurrection Act.

It was hidden in Sections 1076 and 333 of the John Warner Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007. Two hundred years of tradition along with the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act prohibit using federal and National Guard troops for law enforcement inside the country except as allowed by the Constitution or authorized by Congress in times of a national emergency like an insurrection. Under the new law, the chief executive can claim a public emergency, effectively declare martial law and send federal and National Guard troops to the nation’s streets to suppress whatever he calls public disorder that may include peaceful demonstrations against wars of aggression and rightful demands for restoration of our constitutional rights now abandoned.

The new law authorizes a direct role for the Pentagon including use and transfer of state-of-the-art crowd control weapons and technology to state and local responders.

I don’t know about you, but I’m officially scared. You can kid me about wearing my tinfoil hat, but it seems very odd to me that Bush is doing this at the same time he was strong-arming Congress into passing a massive bailout on the backs of middle- and working-class Americans based on a financial crisis taking place one month before a presidential election.

Here is the text of the e-mail from the AFC:

What would you do if you learned that President Bush was preparing – in violation of federal law – to use the U.S. military to maintain order within our borders? I hope you would at least take one minute to help us raise awareness about the situation.

For more than 200 years, federal laws have protected the American people against the use of military forces on our own soil. Strengthened in 1878 by the Posse Comitatus Act, these laws have guaranteed that the federal government could not use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes.*

Without such protection, the federal government could use the might of our army to violate state and individual rights. Moreover, minor incursions by the military into domestic law enforcement activity could lay the foundation for the imposition of martial law at a moment’s notice. This is one slippery slope we don’t want to start sliding down.

That is why we should all be deeply disturbed by the news that President Bush has assigned the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team to be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army component of Northern Command (NorthCom). According to an article in Army Times, the soldiers could be called upon for a variety of tasks, including quelling “civil unrest.” They are apparently engaged in training with shields and batons, beanbag bullets, and Tasers.

We need to raise awareness about this threat to our liberty immediately. The American Freedom Campaign believes the best method available at the moment is to send an email to the moderators of the next two presidential debates, urging them to ask the candidates whether they would fully enforce the Posse Comitatus Act.

Please join us in the effort by clicking on the following link:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/2165/t/1027/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26045

In just one minute, you can share your feelings with both Tom Brokaw at NBC and Bob Schieffer at CBS. After you do so, please spread the word by forwarding this alert widely to friends and family or by using the Tell-A-Friend option that will appear on our site after you send your email.

Thanks so much for taking action on this important campaign.

Best,
Steve

Steve Fox
Campaign Director
American Freedom Campaign Action Fund

* In 2006, Congress weakened the Posse Comitatus Act by expanding the list of activities for which military involvement on domestic soil would be permitted. This expansion was largely repealed a little more than one year later, but President Bush issued a signing statement signaling his intention to ignore the repeal.

Now please, somebody, convince me that this doesn’t mean anything and I should breathe a sigh of relief, because our government would never declare martial law or turn weapons against American citizens. Oh wait. They already deployed armed troops in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. So convince me that wasn’t a prelude to something bigger. I beg someone to explain this away. Because I’m officially scared.