Disappeared News

Thanks to the Saturday edition of Progressive Review for a pointer to this scary story.

This last session of Congress did Bush a favor by doing away with habeus corpus. It appears that now anything goes. A new field manual for distribution to "Active Army, Army National Guard, and U. S. Army Reserve: To be distributed in accordance with initial distribution number 111233, requirements for FM 3-06" confirms that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 has also been scrapped. This was the law that prevented the military from undertaking operations within the USA except under certain emergency situations.

According to this manual, you and I could end up collateral damage. Yup, Our own Army National Guard could bomb Manoa back to the stone age (that'll take care of those uppity UH professors!). If President Bush wishes, Kalihi could be napalmed (so much for HPU also). Even without filing an environmental impact statement the Stryker brigade could wreak destruction all along Dillingham Boulevard on its way to neutralize Makiki.

On Oct. 26, the Army released an updated field manual for Soldiers called "Urban Operations." The manual declares, "The goal of modern warfare is control of the populace." That goal applies to domestic as well as foreign operations: "From the mid-1950s through the 1990s, the Army conducted UO [urban operations] in the U.S. . . . during civil unrest and anti-Vietnam [War] protests."

Urban warfare doctrine targets poor inner city neighborhoods for destruction and occupation whether they are in Third World countries or festering inside the homeland.

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"Urban Operations" makes it clear that, as in Fallujah, Panama City and occupied Palestine, sections of rebellious cities will be exploded by air strikes or plastic explosives because "rubble piles provide excellent covered and concealed positions" for invading Soldiers. "Shantytowns" may be "knock[ed] down and traversed [by tanks] without affecting mobility at all." Destruction of neighborhoods and vital infrastructure is termed "a necessary shaping operation."

Is this just a conspiracy theory? According to this article,

Did you know that the U.S. Northern Command just tightened its control over Northern California? "NORTHCOM" is the combatant command created by the Bush administration to control armies on the move inside the so-called North American battle space, which includes Mexico and Canada. The self-described job of NORTHCOM is to repel invaders, eliminate drug dealers and "terrorists," and control civil disturbances. To spot these nuisances, NORTHCOM runs an intelligence "fusion center" at its headquarters in Colorado Springs, Colo. It correlates electronic data collected from military and commercial sources with duly recorded suspicions forwarded by local law enforcement agencies and neighborhood watch groups.

Read the article and download a copy of the manual yourself.

And don't think it can't happen here.