The Troupes Are Here !!! Part 1 Homeland Security

[Mrs. Sharon B. Hodge]

The Troupes Are Here !!! Part 1 Homeland Security




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NORAD, USNORTHCOM participate in Exercise Vigilant Shield 09
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Northern Command News
November 5, 2008

http://www. northcom. mil/News/2008/110508. html

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command will participate in Exercise Vigilant Shield 09 Nov.
12 - 18

The focus of VS09 is on homeland defense and civil support.
The exercise will include scenarios to achieve exercise objectives within the maritime, aerospace, ballistic missile defense, cyber, consequence management, strategic communications, and counter terrorism domains

VS09 will run concurrent with other Department of Defense-sponsored and international exercises to more realistically test the synchronized response of federal, state, local and international mission partners in preparation for homeland defense, homeland security and civil support missions in the United States and abroad

Concurrent exercises include U.S.
Strategic Command GLOBAL LIGHTNING 09 and BULWARK DEFENDER 09; Canada Command DETERMINED DRAGON; California National Guard VIGILANT GUARD; and the State of California GOLDEN GUARDIAN

VS09 is a Command Post Exercise.
During a CPX, many of the forces involved in the exercise are notional and most of the real forces and equipment are not deployed from their home bases

NORAD is the bi-national command charged with aerospace warning and control, missile warning as well as maritime for the United States and Canada

Formed in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, USNORTHCOM is responsible for Homeland Defense and civil support missions


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US force in Iraq to cut brigade sooner than expected: officials
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AFP News
November 6, 2008

http://rawstory. com/news/afp/US_force_in_Iraq_to_cut_brigade_soo_1...

The US military has decided to reduce its total combat force in Iraq by a brigade to 14 brigades sooner than anticipated because of improved security conditions, the Pentagon said Thursday

The 2nd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, which is based in northwest Baghdad, will begin withdrawing this month two months ahead of schedule, Pentagon officials said

The division's 3rd Brigade also is coming out this month and will not be replaced, which will shrink the size of the US force to 14 combat brigades, they said

The military command in Iraq said the moves were possible because of reduced violence

There are still 152,000 US troops in Iraq, only about 10,000 fewer than at the peak of a 30,000 troop surge earlier this year that halted the country's slide into civil war

Pentagon officials attribute the high troop numbers to overlapping force rotations, but said they were expected to settle at a lower level by early next year

The moves come as US and Iraqi officials are trying to conclude an agreement that will set forth a timetable for a withdrawal of all combat troops by the end of 2011

The so-called status of forces agreement will also provide a legal basis for the US military presence beyond the end of this year, when a UN mandate runs out

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the US side had accepted some changes to a draft agreement proposed by the Iraqis, but would not say what they were






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Elite combat brigade for homeland security missions raises ire of ACLU
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Colorado Independent
By Erin Rosa 11/2/08

http://coloradoindependent. com/13321/elite-combat-brigade-for-home...

In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S.
Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense missions


The comments, made at the annual National Homeland Defense and Security Symposium in Colorado Springs last week, reveal more details about the recent stationing of active military personnel inside United States borders for what officials say is a mission centering around responding to catastrophic emergencies

In September the Army Times reported that the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team — a unit based in Fort Stewart, Ga.
, that most recently spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle gear — would be put under the control of Northern Command, located on Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs

Military representatives claim that the unit, now referred to as the Consequence Management Response Force, is only supposed to assist in responding to terrorist attacks or natural disasters, but that hasn’t stopped numerous civil liberties advocates from speculating just how closely the military will be involved with law enforcement issues falling under a state’s jurisdiction

“This isn’t a military police brigade or a civil affairs brigade. This is actually a combat brigade being assigned a domestic mission,” said Mike German, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative office in Washington., D.
C

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act Request last week with the Department of Justice and the Pentagon asking for records relating to the assignment of domestic forces to the Northern Command

“One of our founding touchstones of democracy is that the military is not to be used against the American people.
Over a hundred years ago that sentiment was put into law in the Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the military from being involved in law enforcement functions,” German said “Our hope is to find as much information as we can to challenge whether this is appropriate or not and to create some public awareness about what’s going on”

Now the commander of Northern Command claims that at least two more military units will be stationed inside the county in the next two years, contributing to an estimated total of 4,700 specially trained service members

“It’s to help us manage the consequences of a large-scale event,” said Renuart. “We have one [unit] now trained and equipped and assigned to the Northern Command.
We’ll grow a second one this calendar year of 2009 and a third one in the calender year 2010 so we can provide the nation three sets of capabilities that could respond to an event of the size of 9/11 or larger”

According to Renuart, that means the units will have unique training in the logistics and medical fields

“These are medical personnel, they’re chemical decontamination teams, they’re engineering teams, they’re logistics folks,” Renuart said. “It is really a force designed to respond to an event of catastrophic size.
There have been some who say that this is designed as a law enforcement activity or that it will somehow be used to take away the authorities of a governor or a state, and that’s absolutely not the case”

But German isn’t convinced

“It’s fine for the general to say that,” the counter-terrorist operations specialist said.
“But we want to know what the policies actually are, what the roles are and what the regulations are to see whether this is actually complying with the law”

During the symposium Renuart admitted that the Northern Command has assisted regularly with law enforcement activities in the past

“Here in Colorado every day we’re integrated with 45 other federal agencies in our headquarters planning for not only the natural disasters, but what would happen if a chemical attack was brought into our country by a terrorist organization,” Renuart said, emphasizing the command’s roles with intelligence and supporting anti-drug efforts

“How do we track intelligence information that might identify networks of terrorists that might be around the world trying to get to us? How do we support law enforcement every day in the fight against narcotics entering illegally in our southwest borders? All of these things are part of the Northern Command mission”

Said German, “It seems to be an incremental approach where the military is being used for narrow missions, but then more and more types of narrow missions until they all combine into one overarching mission”

It is currently unknown what units may be assigned to domestic tasks in the next two years, but members of Northern Command will undergo a large-scale exercise this month simulating a destructive earthquake in southern California



Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart, commander of U.S.
Northern Command






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NORTHCOM has 'fully come of age,' according to outside assessment
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By Katherine McIntire Peters [e-mail] October 29, 2008

http://www. govexec. com/story_page. cfm?articleid=41291&dcn=to...

Six years after it was established to better coordinate military support to civil authorities following catastrophic events on U.S. soil, Northern Command "is effectively providing coordinated and coherent planning and direction to U.S. air-ground-sea forces in support of homeland defense and civil support," according to a recent assessment by retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, an adjunct professor of international affairs at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.
Y

More must be done, however, to increase the capacity of civilian agencies to respond to threats, McCaffrey wrote in an Oct. 14 memo to academy leaders. He recommended increasing the Border Patrol from 11,000 agents to 45,000, and Coast Guard personnel from 36,000 to 75,000. In addition, he cited a need to revitalize the Public Health Service, make the U.S.
Marshals Service a federal law enforcement agency with specialized detention capability, and develop a "true international training and operational capability" at the Drug Enforcement Administration

McCaffrey, a drug czar during the Clinton administration and a highly decorated combat commander and former commanding general of U.S. Southern Command, said he has made four visits to Northern Command headquarters at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., since it was formed in 2002 after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks

"The American people rightly demand that civil public institutions, not military forces, exercise primacy in protecting the U.S. domestic population. However, the planning and emergency operational scale and power of the U.S.
armed forces simply must be placed at the service of civil authorities when major disaster strikes," something Northern Command finally is in a position to do, McCaffrey said

Three forces have forged a new sense of "confidence and effectiveness" at the command, according to McCaffrey:
Command leaders were able to exploit the "sad lessons" of Hurricane Katrina, "the most shameful failure of federal, state and local leadership in any national emergency in our history," he said.Defense Secretary Robert Gates fostered partnerships between Northern Command and the Homeland Security Department, state governors and other international and interagency actors.
Northern Command leaders created a cooperative training and exercise environment to work through responses to scenarios such as pandemic influenza, a cruise missile attack, an attack on commercial aircraft, loss of the power grid, a major earthquake and other potential threats

"The Byzantine federal-state political and legal difficulties of putting together a coherent national emergency response plan are being overcome by the obvious benefits of cooperating with the massively resourced (comparatively) and extremely effective U.S. armed forces," McCaffrey said. "NORTHCOM has the ability to plan and execute large-muscle complex operations.
NORTHCOM can pay the bills
"
Among the potential challenges McCaffrey foresees for NORTHCOM is an unstable Cuba.
While Cuba represents "little, if any, military threat," he predicts that Raul Castro will lose control of the dictatorship within two to three years after the ailing Fidel Castro's death -- events that could trigger massive migration to the United States

"We are going to possibly be faced with the most terrible humanitarian disaster in our history in the coming five years when 250,000 to 500,000 Cubans flee at huge personal risk from the chaos of a struggle for power among the security forces of Cuba -- and head for freedom across the 90 miles of treacherous waters to Florida and the U.S.
coastal Caribbean states," McCaffrey said

Terrorism also remains a critical challenge, he said: "There is little question that there will be continuing criminal conspiracies to attack vulnerable U.S.
infrastructure and to conduct operations designed to murder masses of the American people
"




Terrorizing presidential campaigns wont make a difference... terrorists within our own government will carry things out at will


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DOD Panel: Next President to 'Likely' to Face Crisis in First 270 Days
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The Insider Defense

http://defensenewsstand. com/insider. asp?issue=10242008sp

October 24, 2008 -- The next president is likely to face a major international crisis within his first nine months in office, according to a senior group of business advisers to the defense secretary

Accordingly, the Defense Business Board says the new administration should set a goal to win Senate confirmation of key Pentagon posts in the first 30 days of the inauguration, in order to have a full team in place to deal with such a contingency

Michael Bayer, chairman of the Defense Business Board and veteran Pentagon consultant, this week called for the next administration to move quickly to avoid encountering civilian leadership vacuums that often accompany political transitions

“Prepare for a likely first 270 days crisis,” Bayer warns in an Oct. 23 briefing.
“Too many presidents were ill prepared for this”

Joe Biden, the Democratic ticket's vice presidential nominee, drew criticism earlier this week for suggesting that should he and Barack Obama prevail in the Nov. 4 election, U.S.
adversaries will mount an attack of some kind to test the new president

Bayer's briefing, presented yesterday to a public meeting of the Defense Business Board, recommends the future president elect and his advisers “set aside time in transition to identify the planning, gravitas and interagency process necessary to respond to a likely first-270-day crisis”

For months, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the service chiefs and the Joint Staff have been preparing for the first wartime transfer of Pentagon political authority in four decades.
In addition to identifying defense policy issues for an incoming to understand, the military is also on high operational alert, according to a Joint Staff official

A key goal for the next administration, according to Bayer, must be to fill civilian posts requiring Senate confirmation as soon as possible

The incoming administration “must not wait until June” to get assistant secretaries confirmed and October for deputy assistant secretaries to be Senate confirmed, his briefing states

“Need a very concerted, well-defined process to have top 3 tiers ready to go to Senate confirmation in first 30 days,” Bayer recommends

His briefing also notes challenges that nearly every president since Dwight Eisenhower has faced in the early days. In 1953, Eisenhower agreed to work with the British to depose Iran's prime minister and install the Shah; John Kennedy ordered the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in April 1961; Lyndon Johnson in Aug. 1964 had to deal with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which became a pretext for escalating U.S.
military involvement in Vietnam

Richard Nixon, in the third month of this presidency in 1969, escalated U.S. military operations in Southeast Asia by ordering aerial attacks against Cambodia and Laos. Jimmy Carter, during his first month in office in 1977, directed unilateral removed of nuclear weapons from South Korea and announced plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops from the peninsula, a step that drew public criticism from then Army Maj. Gen. John Singlaub, a senior U.S. commander in South Korea, whom Carter relieved of duty. In his fifth month as president, George H.W. Bush, in the summer of 1989, sent the first wave of U.S.
military personnel to Panama to set the stage for the launch of “Operation Just Cause” that December

Finally, Bayer’s briefing notes, Bill Clinton, in Feb. 1993, his second month in office, had to manage the World Trade Center bombing; while George W. Bush, in April of his first year in office, dealt with the downing of a Navy spy plane near China.
Months later, Bush was faced with the terrorist attacks in September in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania -- Jason Sherman






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ACLU Demands Information on U.
S Military Domestic Operations
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by Tom Burghardt / October 24th, 2008

http://www. dissidentvoice. org/2008/10/aclu-demands-information-on...

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request demanding information from the government on U.S. Northern Command’s (NORTHCOM) deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Combat Brigade Team (BCT) on U.S.
soil for “civil unrest” and “crowd control” duties

Last month, Army Times published a piece detailing how the 1st BCT spent “35 of the last 60 months in Iraq.” The 1st BCT–also known as the “Raiders”–carried out house-to-house raids and engaged in close-quarters combat in the city of Ramadi to suppress Iraqi resistance to U.S.
occupation, according to a report on the World Socialist Website

Readers will recall my October 11 piece, “Militarizing the Homeland:” NORTHCOM’s Joint Task Force-Civil Support,” that described NORTHCOM’s Vibrant Response exercise at Fort Stewart, Georgia

In tandem with the elite 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, the 1st BCT participated in mock drills designed to “coordinate with local governments and interagency organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” U.S.
Northern Command News reported

The Pentagon revealed that 1st BCT is a key component of NORTHCOM’s Joint Task Force-Civil Support (JTF-CS), designed to “execute both homeland defense and civil support missions.
” As I pointed out in a piece earlier this month, current Army doctrine is heavily-weighted towards contingency planning for “civil disturbances”

Indeed, Army Times reported that the 1st BCT would be kitted out with “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded.” The publication reported, “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.
” But after spilling the proverbial beans, Army Times retracted that portion of their report

NORTHCOM now claims that a “nonlethal” weapons package was intended only for use in Iraq and not in the heimat.
In the opinion of this writer, this is nothing more than a feeble Pentagon move to spin a story that has garnered much unfavorable publicity since it first appeared

Rules for domestic military operations, including as an armed force to suppress “civil disturbances,” are clearly spelled out in Department of Defense Directive 3025.12 (DoD 3025.12), “Military Assistance for Civil Disturbances” (MACDIS).
Army doctrine and rules of engagement for civil disturbance and “riot control” planning have long recommended equipping troops with “non-lethal weapons” (NLWs) for what the Pentagon euphemistically calls “operations other than war”

As researcher and activist Frank Morales reported in Police State America, the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL), located at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, “reacting to a growing sense of urgency to field weaponry in step with the requirements of globalization, issued a primer on the subject, entitled, Civil Disturbances: Incorporating Non-Lethal Technology, Tactics, Techniques and Procedures,” in 2000 Why is the Pentagon now so hesitant to come clean on plans for using NLWs in the “homeland”?

Since the late 1960s, the military has gradually expanded its brief to include domestic law enforcement, drug interdiction and border security, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. The 1878 law specifically bars the use of the military in domestic policing.
However the trend towards militarizing the inherently civilian nature of locally controlled law enforcement has accelerated since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, most infamously with the October 2002 creation of NORTHCOM itself

U.S.
Northern Command’s original mandate “to provide command and control of Department of Defense (DoD) homeland defense efforts and to coordinate defense support of civil authorities,” has since expanded with the May 2007 National Security Presidential Directive 51, Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20 (NSPD 51/HSPD 20)

Indeed, as previously reported, NSPD 51/HSPD 20’s top secret Continuity of Government annexes have been refused to members of Congress; a clear move by the White House to inhibit the legislative branch from performing its lawful oversight functions What then, is the Bush administration hiding from Congress and the American people?

The ACLU stakes out the legal ground on the erosion of Posse Comitatus and states,

Civilian authorities, not the military, have historically controlled and directed the internal affairs of the United States. This rule traces its origins to the nation’s founding and has been reaffirmed in landmark statutes including the Posse Comitatus Act, which helps preserve the foundational principles of our Constitution and democracy. (”ACLU Demands Information on Military Deployment within U.
S Borders,” Press Release, October 21, 2008)

Jonathan Hafetz, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project inquires: “What is the unit’s mission? What functions will it perform? And why was it necessary to deploy the unit rather than rely on civilian agencies and personnel and the National Guard? Given the magnitude of the issues at stake, it is imperative that the American people know the truth about this new and unprecedented intrusion of the military in domestic affairs”

Indeed, senior NORTHCOM commanders have repeatedly dodged these questions. During an emergency, they claim JTF-CS “supports” the “Primary Federal Agency [PFA] … designated to coordinate the government’s response to a disaster or emergency situation.” But “support” to a civilian agency is not the same as playing a subordinate role to civilian leadership.
This is stated unambiguously by NORTHCOM: “Although the JTF-CS supports the PFA throughout a CBRNE [chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and high-yield explosive] consequence management operation, the unit operates within a clear Department of Defense chain of command”

In other words, the “chain of command” followed by JTF-CS begins and ends with the Executive Branch and the President in his role as leader of the “unitary executive branch” and Commander-in-Chief.
As former FBI whistleblower and senior ACLU national policy counsel Mike German states, “This is a radical departure from separation of civilian law enforcement and military authority, and could, quite possibly, represent a violation of law”

To facilitate an open and public assessment of recent “homeland” military deployments, the ACLU demanded that the Departments of Justice, Homeland Security and Defense “immediately make public all legal opinions, executive orders, presidential directives, memos, policy guidance, and other documents that authorize the deployment of military troops for domestic purposes”

Such a demand arises precisely because of the unprecedented expansion of the U.S.
national security-surveillance complex since the 9/11 attacks As the civil liberties’ group pointedly reminds us,

[T]he Department of Defense has dramatically expanded its role in domestic law enforcement and intelligence operations, including the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping programs, the Department of Homeland Security’s use of military spy satellites, and the participation of military personnel in state and local intelligence fusion centers.
The ACLU has repeatedly expressed concern about these incremental encroachments of the military into domestic affairs, and the assignment of active duty troops to Northern Command only heightens these concerns

Unfortunately, some, if not most members of Congress, rather than defending the rights of the American people would rather re-write Posse Comitatus to reflect the needs of an “Executive Branch gone wild” As David Swanson reported on AfterDowningStreet. org, Senator John Warner wrote a constituent who had expressed alarm over the 1st BCT’s attachment to NORTHCOM Swanson commented,

This, like other changes imposed by President Bush, of course violates the Posse Comitatus Act. It also served to strengthen the threats of martial law that Congressman Brad Sherman reported the White House making to Congress members in order to win their support for the $780 billion give-away to Wall Street.
(David Swanson, “Sen Warner Supports Domestic Use of Military, AfterDowningStreet. org, October 21, 2008)

Claiming he is “deeply concerned that the Department of Defense and the President may not have authority to use active duty personnel in the most effective manner,” Warner writes,

I believe we must review the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act and similar provisions that limit the role of the active duty military to ensure that every available asset is properly employed in any type of future emergency situation. Title 18, Section 1385 of the U.S. Code, commonly referred to as the Posse Comitatus Act, prevents the armed forces from becoming involved in law enforcement activities for which, in most cases, they are not specifically trained or equipped.
Posse Comitatus is largely rooted in historical tradition that prohibits military involvement in civilian affairs

To be clear, I do not believe that U.S. law pertaining to this matter needs to be entirely rewritten.
I do, however, think it is necessary that we review the regulations governing use of military personnel in domestic operations in order to better understand how all of our military assets can best assist during emergency situations

Attentive readers will recall that “The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007,” included a section that permitted the President to deploy the armed forces to “restore public order” or to “suppress any insurrection.
” As Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman reported earlier this month, “while a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that he did not feel bound by the repeal”

The ACLU’s concerns are fully warranted and demand an impartial evaluation of the dangerous implications for democracy, particularly in light of the current capitalist economic crisis.
As the historic meltdown deepens, social tensions–and struggles–will inevitably intensify As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky wrote,

Civil unrest resulting from the financial meltdown is a distinct possibility, given the broad impacts of financial collapse on lifelong savings, pension funds, homeownership, etc

The timing of this planned militarization is crucial: how will it affect the presidential elections scheduled for Tuesday November 4

The brigade in its domestic homeland activities will be designated as the Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF)

What “Consequences” are being envisaged? (”Pre-election Militarization of the North American Homeland US Combat Troops in Iraq repatriated to ‘help with civil unrest’,” Global Research, September 26, 2008)

While the state justifies this deployment as a response to “terrorist threats,” what other scenarios are being contemplated?

With daily reports of voter suppression drives by the Republican Party in multiple “battleground” states hitting the corporate media, and a major exposé of these antidemocratic operations by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and Greg Palast published in Rolling Stone, Washington’s plans for the use of military force at home is a dagger aimed directly at the American people–and what remains of a democratic republic–by a thuggish and bankrupt ruling elite






Matthew Rothschild (part of the Rothschild Illuminati) tells gatekeeper Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that over 23,000 Business Leaders Working With FBI and Homeland Security had formed INFRAGARD given the power to SHOOT TO KILL ANY OF YOU when riots break out in USA.