Thread: Special army unit ready to be deployed on American soil

Note: An update has been posted at the end of the article.

In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.

(AP Photo/David Longstreath).

The special force, which is the new name being given to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, has been training at Fort Stewart, Georgia and is composed of 80,000 troops.

According to the Army Times,

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.

The key phrase is 'may be called upon to help with civil unrest.'

This afternoon a local radio talk show host reported that he had been in contact with a member of the military. This military source stated that the armed forces have been alerted to the strong possibility that civil unrest may occur in the United States this summer, prior to the midterm elections of 2010.

The source described this as 'our long, hot summer of discontent' that could be eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1968 when riots broke out in many of our largest cities.

However, the summer of 2010 could well be much worse due to the players involved. In 1968 the major players were war protesters. This time, the outrage simmering beneath the surface of American society involves a broad cross-section of the heartland, and most of them are heavily armed.

It is highly unlikely that these citizens would ever initiate armed conflict of any kind. In their view, gun rights are for self-defense--and for defense against tyrannical government, which our Founders regarded as the most dangerous force on earth.

However, it has become clear that other groups may well initiate violence in order to start an 'incident' that would give Obama and a rogue Congress a reason to implement martial law, confiscate the citizens' guns, enforce curfews, and suspend all future elections until such time as it is deemed 'safe' to proceed with human liberty as encapsulated in the right to vote.

Tea Party members, for example, have been warned in recent days that members of Andy Stern's SEIU union and members of the organization formerly known as ACORN plan to infiltrate Tea Party gatherings in order to incite some sort of incident that could result in armed conflict.

In addition, all indications point to a humiliating defeat for the Democrats and Obama in November. Not only will the House in all likelihood transfer to Republican control, but it is increasingly possible for the Democrats to lose the Senate as well.

And there are Leftwing groups in this country that would use whatever means necessary to prevent that from happening.

ACORN has already gone underground, changing its name so as to fly beneath the radar screen. How many people will the group register to vote illegally?

And with Obama's plan to naturalize between 10 and 20 million illegal aliens, a brand new voter base for the Democrats will be in place prior to November.

Add to this the growing unrest over continued high unemployment, the coming spike in interest rates and inflation, and the still-boiling outrage over the manner in which Obama and the Democrats shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the citizens, and all of the ingredients are present for a major F-5 tornado to sweep across the heartland.

To what extent would soldiers use deadly force during such 'civil unrest' should the Consequence Management Response Team be utilized? During the anti-war riots of the 1960s they killed student protesters. What about now?

The military source cited by the radio host today was asked this very question. He would merely say that the culture of the U.S. military is changing--half support Obama and the other half are dead-set against him.

His conclusion? There is no way to know for sure if they would obey an order to open fire on ordinary citizens.

Update: The Cato Institute published this warning when the program was launched in its first phase in 2008 (the program has been updated and expanded since 200. The Founders insisted that standing armies were never to be used against American citizens on our own soil, no matter what violations of this principle have occurred in the years following. In the spirit of the Patriots and of real journalists government must be questioned constantly and held to intense scrutiny in order to preserve liberty.

For commentary on the issues of the day, visit my blog at The Liberty Sphere.

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More from CATO

Be Wary of Using Military as Police

by Gene Healy and Benjamin H. Friedman

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. Benjamin H. Friedman is research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute and a PhD candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Added to cato.org on December 26, 2008

This article appeared in the Orange County Register on December 26, 2008
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The mainstream media has finally gotten around to reporting that the Pentagon has assigned active-duty troops to a homeland defense mission, a historical first. On Oct. 1, the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team, freshly redeployed from Iraq, began a year-long assignment as a domestic "chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force," or CCMRF ("Sea-Smurf"). The 1st BCT is the first of three CCMRF teams, who will comprise 15,000-20,000 soldiers, according to the Army. The other two will come from the Army National Guard or reserves.

Neither the terrorist threat nor the hazards of bad weather require rethinking our traditional reluctance to use standing armies at home. We need not fear a coup, but we should worry about misusing our busy military for civilian tasks and developing an tendency to rely on the troops to answer every scare.

Gene Healy is a vice president at the Cato Institute and author of The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power. Benjamin H. Friedman is research fellow in defense and homeland security studies at the Cato Institute and a PhD candidate in political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
More by Gene HealyMore by Benjamin H. Friedman

Initial reports were that the 1st BCT might be used to deal with civil unrest and crowd control, missions that would be in severe tension with the Posse Comitatus Act, the longstanding federal statute that restricts the president's ability to use the U.S. military as a domestic police force. In September, the Army Times described the unit's training as "the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded," including beanbag bullets, Tasers and traffic roadblocks.

That report, along with the Bush administration's claim that the Constitution allows that president to use forces as he sees fit, no matter what Congress forbids, created well-founded fears that the CCMRFs first attack would be on Posse Comitatus. Yet Pentagon spokespeople deny that forces will be used for law enforcement purposes. And one suspects that the Bush administration's monarchial view of executive power will be out of fashion come January.

That shouldn't placate us. The real trouble is what is legal, not what isn't. Even when it doesn't lead to collateral damage, the use of standing armies at home can, to quote Jefferson, "overawe the public sentiment," and acclimate Americans to a militarized home front inconsistent with democratic life.

Neither the terrorist threat nor the hazards of bad weather require rethinking our traditional reluctance to use standing armies at home.

In the panicked days following 9/11, Bush administration officials repeatedly suggested that only armed soldiers could defeat the domestic terror threat. When thousands of troops patrolled the streets in preparation for the 2002 Winter Olympics, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld noted approvingly that "the largest theater for the United States is not Afghanistan today. It is, in fact, Salt Lake City and the environs."

To guard against hijackers, then-Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta proposed putting Delta Force operatives on domestic flights, collecting frequent-flier miles instead of pursuing al Qaida in Afghanistan. Today, along with the "war on drugs," we contemplate using our military to fight hurricanes, floods, immigrants, Mumbai-style attacks, and more, as if it's the national Swiss army knife.

But there is no good argument that domestic militarization is necessary to keep us safe. Civilian officers have been successfully keeping the peace and responding to disasters for a century or so, occasionally supplemented by National Guardsmen under the command of their state governors. Every state's National Guard force is now equipped to cope with attacks using unconventional weapons. Their ranks will be bolstered as the war in Iraq winds down.

The regular military is wonderful for destroying enemy troop formations or bombing their command centers, but not for finding hidden killers like terrorists. Intelligence and old-fashioned police work are our most potent counter-terrorism tools. Neither does Hurricane Katrina justify a domestic army. The problem there was the mismanagement of the National Guard and local first responders, not their lack of capacity.

Moreover, using troops at home undermines military readiness. When soldiers are forced into the role of police officers, their war-fighting skills degrade, according to a 2003 General Accounting Office report that looked at some of the homeland security missions the military carried out after 9/11. The GAO also found that, naturally, such missions also put a serious strain on a military already heavily committed abroad.

Yet creeping militarization continues, and few in the media or Congress object. The militarized future to fear isn't one that ends in a dictatorship or martial law. Our troops' commitment to civilian rule prevents that. The danger we face is one in which the public embraces the notion that civilian institutions are weak and messy, and that when you want the job done, you call in the boys in green. That approach will make us no safer — only less free.


http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9869


Kathyet

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control



Well then, they should currenty be deployed to the southern border area....... there's plenty of civil unrest and crowd control issues going on down there :P

The Schutzstaffel (Protection Squadron) was a major Nazi organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The SS grew from a small paramilitary unit to a powerful force that served as the Führer's "Praetorian Guard," the Nazi Party's "Shield Squadron" and a force that, fielding almost a million men (both on the front lines and as political police), managed to exert as much political influence in the Third Reich as the Wehrmacht, Germany's regular armed forces. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS, under Heinrich Himmler's command, was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, and most of the particularly egregious ones.

OBAMA = HITLER?

Now may be the time to make any comments you have regarding the Posse Comitatus Act and any violation thereof, with the creation of this special military unit, which may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control - duties which clearly fall under the jurisdiction of local or state police agencies.

This is a text book case of a violation of that act when done so by the federal government. Federal deployment (or a state govenor deploying National Guard) of military units to defend an international border does not violate the Posse Comitatus Act.

Deploying the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry ( changing it's name does not change its purpose or act) to engage in crowd control or combate civil unrest, arguable does violate this act and was exactly the rational for creating the act in the first place. It was passed to prevent the use of military force by the federal government, against the citizens of the states for law enforcement purposes.

It's becoming painfully obvious that our Constitution was enacted to protect us from the very people who are now running this country and seem to have such little regard for this document.

This is a scary concept!

Tea Party members, for example, have been warned in recent days that members of Andy Stern's SEIU union and members of the organization formerly known as ACORN plan to infiltrate Tea Party gatherings in order to incite some sort of incident that could result in armed conflict.

The purple shirts are the new “brown shirtsâ€

I read elsewhere the majority of these people are from foreign lands, as the US military could not be counted on to kill their own people.

Isn't this related to Interpol being given free access in the United States?

3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
By Gina Cavallaro - Staff writer
Posted : Tuesday Sep 30, 2008 16:16:12 EDT

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.

It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.

But 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.

“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,â€

[b]Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.â€

I am wondering if anyone notice these articles originated in 2008?

The following article is from the 2009 U.S. Army Posture Statement
Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and High Yield Explosive (CBRNE) Consequence Management Reaction Force (CCMRF)

What is it?
The CCMRF is a Title X task force comprised of both Active and Reserve Component capabilities. The CCMRF's primary role when responding to a CBRNE event is to augment the consequence management efforts of the first responders.

What has the Army done?
The current CCMRF fielding plan establishes three separate CCMRFs to provide a response capability to multiple near-simultaneous CBRNE events. The CCMRFs are identical in force structure and are self-sustaining and tailorable to any CBRNE event. A CCMRF has unique CBRNE-trained and equipped personnel and general purpose forces trained to operate in a CBRNE environment.

The current structure relies heavily on the Army, with limited capabilities provided by the other Services. On October 1, 2008, the Army assigned approximately 2,900 of the 4,700 Department of Defense (DoD) personnel to the Commander, United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) for CCMRF-One. The Army CCMRF forces include robust command and control, comprehensive decontamination of personnel and equipment, hazardous material handling and disposal, air and land transportation, aerial evacuation, and sustainment.

What continued efforts does the Army have planned for the future?
The CCMRF sourcing in FY10 presents a different challenge. The global demand for Army Brigade Combat Teams, and the shift of forces to Operation Enduring Freedom, has driven the Army to a more tailored sourcing plan for the CCMRFs in FY10. The Army will establish maneuver enhanced brigades (MEBs) from the Active Component and the Army National Guard to provide the robust command and control capabilities in the CCMRFs. The CCMRF fits this organization's mission well, and using MEBs helps restore both strategic depth and balance to the Army.
The CCMRF- One (Active Component) units will be assigned to USNORTHCOM on October 1, 2010. The CCMRF-Two (Reserve Components) will be placed on a prepare to deploy order while assigned to USNORTHCOM for a minimum of 24 months from October 1, 2009 through September 30, 2011.
Why is this important to the Army?
There is no question that CBRNE incidents pose a great, and very real, challenge to the security of the American people. A terrorist attack on U.S. soil or an accidental CBRNE incident would produce catastrophic results that would likely overwhelm the civil authorities' response capabilities. As a result, the DoD has established a requirement for CCMRF forces to be trained and ready to respond to requests from civil authorities

http://www.army.mil/aps/09/information_ ... ccmrf.html