[Infowarrior] - Pentagon Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

[Richard Forno]

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008; A01


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217.html?hpid=moreheadlines

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the  
United
States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a
nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to
Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland  
security
was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of
prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil  
liberties
groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland  
emphasis
threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse  
Comitatus
Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in  
domestic
law enforcement.

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The Pentagon's plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready  
for
emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built
around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was
available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of  
the
U.S. Northern Command.

If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller
National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in  
supporting
local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond  
to a
domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield
explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.

Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack  
have
been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a
350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later  
based
it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated  
after
the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a  
Pentagon
joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United
States.

In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized  
"preparing for
multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." National security  
threats
were not limited to adversaries who seek to grind down U.S. combat  
forces
abroad, McHale said, but also include those who "want to inflict such
brutality on our society that we give up the fight," such as by  
detonating a
nuclear bomb in a U.S. city.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/30/AR2008113002217.html?hpid=moreheadlines