Militarizing the State — Military, Plans, Bird Flu & Katrina.
In the span of a few days last week, the winds of domesticated military might are fast becoming a gale force.
First, on Tuesday Oct. 4, GWBush announced that he would have no qualms sending the military out to enforce a bird flu quarantine, should an outbreak occur within the continental U.S. (is that if, or when? or dare we ask.) The disease, with documented cases spreading from Turkey to Colombia and Brazil, is another daunting, global gale force.
Second, the Senate intelligence panel — headed by Pat Roberts (R-KS) — sneaked language into a bill allowing the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) greater powers to spy on U.S. citizens.
And, the DIA does not deny their intent. Rather they claim that they seek the new laws “[to] follow leads about terrorist activities,” according to DIA spokesman, Don Black.
Yet, as history has shown many a time before, the citizens cannot trust government intelligence agencies (regardless of whether they are FBI, CIA or DIA) to act within the law — evident from the recent Spy Files of the Denver Police Dept. (admitted to only in 2003) to the well-known conduct of COINTELPRO.
October 15th, 2005 at 3:30 pm
Deploying the military in our homeland to quell a plague might be the most moral use of federal gov’t force at this juncture. And once back here, we might ought keep them permanently deployed defending our territory instead of engaging in global wargames that waste wealth and invite counterattacks (sometimes violent) on U.S. interests.