Reason Number 328 the Bush Administration Has Made Me a Conspiracy Theorist

CS Monitor:

Bush suggests lifting the ban on using the military domestically.

By Mark Sappenfield

WASHINGTON - As Washington picks through the lessons learned from hurricane Katrina, there is a growing conviction that the only organization with the skills, expertise, and resources needed to respond quickly to a catastrophe of such magnitude is the American military.

President Bush suggested a larger disaster relief role for the armed forces in his national address last week, and Congress has indicated it will take up the issue this autumn. Though the topic has emerged at other troubled times - most recently 9/11 - Congress has always avoided amending Posse Comitatus, the law that has kept active-duty soldiers out of civilian law-enforcement affairs since Reconstruction.

...

As officials look at what went wrong - and wonder what to do if a future disaster similarly eviscerates local responders - their attention has turned to the military. Clearly, the armed forces are best prepared to deploy quickly to devastated areas, bringing not only a clear command structure, but an array of resources ideally suited for difficult work - from mobile communication systems to troops trained for the most taxing conditions. In his Thursday address, Mr. Bush called the armed forces "the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice."

As of yet, he has simply stated that "a challenge on this scale requires ... a broader role for the armed forces." Yet even before Bush's address, Sen. John Warner (R) of Virginia wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, saying that the Senate Armed Services Committee would be looking into "the entire legal framework governing a President's power to use the regular armed forces to restore public order in ... a large-scale, protracted emergency" - and asking Mr. Rumsfeld to do the same.

This framework rests on Posse Comitatus as well as the Insurrection Act, which together bar active-duty troops from engaging in domestic law-enforcement activities, unless there is essentially an open rebellion.

...

Posse Comitatus goes even further, giving only National Guard units the authority to act as law enforcement, because they are under the control of governors. Active-duty troops are being used in the Gulf relief efforts but only for humanitarian efforts and logistical support. The move to amend Posse Comitatus would likely give them law-enforcement powers.

...

How significantly the military will be impacted by any effort to further incorporate it into disaster response will depend on the shape of future proposals. But the first step would likely be the amending of Posse Comitatus, and civil libertarians, too, worry that any change - however small - could be rash and misguided.

After 9/11, "the government immediately leapt to the conclusion that there was a lack of power," so it passed the Patriot Act, says Timothy Edgar of the American Civil Liberties Union, suggesting that a revised Posse Comitatus could give the military a keyhole to greater power down the road. "Changing the law in a way that threatens civil liberties isn't the answer to a problem of management."

Well, isn't this just astoundingly OUTRAGEOUS?????

After Bush decimated the National Guard with his fucktarded Iraq invasion, now he wants to amend one of the most basic protections we have from dictatorship, by allowing regular active-duty military to carry out law-enforcement in case of emergency!

ARGGGGGGGGGGHHHH!

And I can just see them: slowly they will start relaxing what constitutes an emergency, and before you know it, we have a full-fledged police state.

These lunatics must be stopped.