WHY THOUSANDS OF TROOPS ARE STILL IN DC

 

Syndicated Investigative Reporter Michael Webster

Many Americans are questioning the Constitutionally of having troops in the capital with nearly 30,000 National Guard units summoned to the Capitol resembled an armed camp, with rifle-bearing soldiers standing shoulder from one another, and heavy military trucks and K-rails blocking excess to the capital and roads leading to the capital. That is roughly three times the total number of American troops deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria combined. Other troops will help control traffic and Metro stations elsewhere in the city. Members of the Guard at the Capitol will be equipped with Beretta M9 sidearms and some will carry automatic rifles and shotguns. All will have protective riot gear, including helmets and Kevlar vests, Guard officials said. According to some legislatures these troop weapons are not loaded and have no ammunition in them.

The city itself contended with a wide perimeter of closed streets. The military will keep thousands of National Guard troops at the US Capital for the foreseeable future. This appears to the rest of the world as turning America into a banana republic.

According to the government officials' the troops will be the National Guard and not active-duty. But officials know such events are fraught with risk and cite Kent State in 1970, Tiananmen Square in 1989 and Tehran in 2009.

 The Defense Department crossed a line that the Pentagon officials have tried to avoid. This to the world appears to be pitting armed military forces against American citizens in there own Capital.

The NY Times reports that the vast majority of military forces in Washington will be National Guard. But a small number of elite commandos from the Joint Special Operations Command, a secretive command based at Fort Bragg, N.C.,This elite force is designed to help counter any terrorist attack or other national emergency, especially any involving nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.

Under the 1878 federal law members of the army are prohibited from acting as a domestic police force.

Active-duty troops are only allowed to help police officers under limited exceptions to the act, including when expressly authorized by law or by the constitution.

But one politician has expressed concern that the soldiers may find themselves in a legal grey area. House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness, said the situation teetered “on the edge of the Posse Comitatus law.”

The US military’s Northern Command defended the troops’ presence in the Capital.