Guard members previously hunted insurgents in Iraq
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
A photo showing fully armed U.S. National Guard troops patrolling a
quiet residential street in Crookston, Minnesota has gone viral, once
again underscoring concerns that Americans are being conditioned to
accept the gradual imposition of martial law.
Although the photo is undated, Guard troops from the local Crookston
Armory routinely take part in off-base exercises which train the local
population to accept the sight of armed soldiers patrolling their
neighborhoods as normal.
One such exercise in February 2011 dubbed “Urban Operations Training” involved military Humvees and 27
armed soldiers conducting a drill around the Bridge Street area of
Crookston.
According to “Maggie,” the woman who took the photograph, when she started taking pictures of
the troops one of them told her, “Just training Ma’am. Joining up with
another patrol at the rally point.”
When Maggie asked why they were training on the streets of a quiet
residential area, a younger soldier responded, “To be honest ma’am, I
don’t know.”
Members of the same Guard unit shown on the photograph – Minnesota National Guard, Unit 2-136 CAB / B Company – have been deployed to Iraq where their duties would potentially have included rounding up alleged
insurgents and taking them to prison camps, a frightening prospect given
that the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act allows for American citizens to be similarly kidnapped and detained without trial.
National Guard troops are routinely involved in ‘urban warfare
training’ drills but they usually take place within the confines of
military bases. Many fear that the increasing presence of armed soldiers
patrolling residential neighborhoods is a precursor to martial law.
Indeed, back in 2008 the Washington Post reported how 20,000 U.S. troops returning from Iraq would be stationed inside
America under Northcom for purposes of “domestic security” from
September 2011 onwards.
Northcom officials were forced to subsequently issue a denial after the Army Times initially reported that the troops would be used to deal “with civil unrest and crowd control.”The use of U.S. troops in law enforcement duties is a complete
violation of the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, which
substantially limit the powers of the federal government to use the
military for law enforcement unless under precise and extreme
circumstances.
