Exercise
Michael Bane is concerned about some military training in weapons confiscations in Iowa. I wouldn’t quite spell it out all doom and gloomy like Michael, since that’s what the guard does in Iraq and Afghanistan and they’re probably training for that. But it is a bit disconcerting.
February 21st, 2009 at 10:33 am
It does look like training for a pretty common Iraq scenario. (Wouldn’t work quite like this in Afghanistan). The Guard could have evaded this bad publicity if they made the bad guy in the scenario an IED facilitator instead.
Is the guy that wrote the original article really named “Butch Heman?” I mean, that’s a red flag right there….
The law presently places certain obstacles in the way of using the Guard to confiscate weapons, even in a “state of emergency.” Of course, the Congress could change the law, but Occam’s Razor tells me most Guard units are more concerned about being ready for their next deployment downrange, than they are about preparing to be the bad guys in Butch Heman’s wet-bed nightmares.
February 21st, 2009 at 10:36 am
I was born and raised in Iowa and it scares the b’jeezus out of me. No one in Iowa looks outside Iowa. They are almost unilaterally concerned with internal issues. AND they keep re-electing Tom Harkin, the guy who wants to put all guns on a ship and sink it in the ocean.
February 21st, 2009 at 12:32 pm
We shouldn’t be doing this in Iraq. We shouldn’t be cultivating this skillset at all, especially not in our own national guard troops.
February 21st, 2009 at 1:01 pm
Not sure what to think – certainly “cordon and search” is a valid military skill for ops in urban areas, particularly in an insurgency environment. But the choices of words in that article are certainly curious – for one, I doubt we’re searching any part of Iraq or Afghanistan for a “gun dealer”; for another, if they’re looking for a person in this exercise, why are they searching through cupboards and drawers? That sort of search is for someTHING, not someONE.
Might just be standard-issue tone-deafness on the part of the NG spokespeople, but it certainly does NOT give me the warm fuzzies..
February 21st, 2009 at 3:25 pm
They canceled it … too much bad publicity.
That and not being able to answer simple questions about the posse commitatus act.
February 21st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
Too bad they canceled it. If some ingenious soul had gotten a copy of what the suspect looked like we could have had people masked a la V for Vendetta all over town.
Monkeywrench!
February 21st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I’d worry about this. Our congress-critters are concerned about one thing and one thing only — staying in power, and we all know that one major obstacle to that is an armed populace. Remember that Hitler first disarmed the Germans before he did anything else.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Actually I think that it was the Wiemar Republic guys that tightened up the gun laws. They were worried about this bunch of assholes who wanted to overthrow the German government. The assholes were lead by a guy with a funny little mustache.
Oh right, he ended up getting elected chancellor and the assholes ended up running the country.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:07 pm
If this was meant to develop a skill set specific to Iraq or Afghanistan it would have been much more immersive and true to those cultures. See this story on Fort Irwin, which had 1600 military and civilian Red Team players, including 250 Iraqi-Americans, or this story on theater immersion.
I have no idea if the Iowa training scenario is part of someone’s master plan or just an eager-beaver’s bright idea. I’d guess somewhere in the middle. But I don’t think a completely innocent interpretation passes Occam’s razor.
Even if it is innocent, the ATF raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco used an off the shelf raid plan developed under the first Bush administration. This kind of planning has consequences.
February 21st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
Why are we even debating this? A “weapons dealer?” Could they be any more obvious?
If this had been done on the internet instead of by the administration, I would have immediately written it off as obvious trolling.
February 22nd, 2009 at 4:47 am
Uh, does anybody remember the full battalion of active Army rotated to CONUS to “help” at home? I tend to look at this with a jaundiced eye.
There just seems to be too many scenarios being played out, that each by itself may be dismissed, but taken in toto, look suspiciously dangerous to a free society.
February 22nd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Makes for a good ad though say in 2012
“In his first 30 days as president, National Guard and army troop began planning for a training excercise that would train them to search law abiding American civilian’s homes, with no regard for the fourth amendment.”
“If something like this could be undertaken in the first 30 days of his administration, do you really want to see what could be undertaken in the second term of his administration.”
paid for by [Huckbees, Palin, Romnee or some other RINO runnig for office] for President
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:31 pm
Dammit. I can’t find the story that I saw only yesterday about US Marines sitting-in on DUI roadblocks in California.
None of this is any good, ladies and gentlemen.
February 23rd, 2009 at 3:34 pm
You mean this?