ACLU Demands Information on U.S. Military Domestic Operations
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ACLU Demands Information on U.S. Military Domestic Operations.
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.
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.
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”?
More at the source:
Antifascist Calling…: ACLU Demands Information on U.S. Military Domestic Operations
