Broken Gear, Piling Up
The Washington Post has a fascinating report from the
Anniston Army Depot, where "sprawling lots of tanks and
other armored vehicles are just the start of a huge
backlog" of gear broken by Iraq and Afghanistan.
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/cat_ground_vehicles.html
"There's stuff, stuff everywhere," Joan Gustafson, a
depot official, said as she wheeled her brown Chevrolet
van through a landscape of rolling hills lined with
armadas of mobile guns.
"There's another field of M1s," she said, motioning
toward a swath of M1A1 Abrams tanks next to the winding
road. "We're just waiting for someone to tell us what to
do with them..."
Equipment shipped back from Iraq is stacking up at all
the Army depots: More than 530 M1 tanks, 220 M88
wreckers and 160 M113 armored personnel carriers are
sitting at Anniston. The Red River Army Depot in Texas
has 700 Bradley Fighting Vehicles and 450 heavy and
medium-weight trucks, while more than 1,000 Humvees are
awaiting repair at the Letterkenny Army Depot in
Pennsylvania.
Despite the work piling up, the Army's depots have been
operating at about half their capacity because of a lack
of funding for repairs. In the spring, a funding gap
caused Anniston and other depots to lose about a month's
worth of work...
Responding to urgent requests from the Army and Marine
Corps, Congress approved an extra $23.8 billion in
October to replace worn-out equipment in fiscal 2007.
With the money, the Army plans to double the workload at
its depots, which will repair and upgrade 130,000 pieces
in 2007, up from 63,000 last year. This will include a
quadrupling of the number of tanks, Bradleys and other
tracked vehicles overhauled, from 1,000 to 4,000.
At Anniston, which will handle 1,800 combat vehicles in
fiscal 2007, a cavernous 250,000-square-foot repair shop
is humming as damaged tanks are rolled in one by one and
disassembled with the help of giant cranes. Removing an
M1 tank's turret alone takes a day and a half, and the
entire overhaul requires 54 days and costs about $1
million, said Ted A. Law, the depot's vehicle manager.
Earnest Linn, 58, a heavy-mobile-equipment mechanic who
as of January will have worked at Anniston for 30 years,
said that "it's never been like this" since the end of
the Vietnam War.
December 5, 2006 12:48 PM | Ground Vehicles | Discuss
http://www.defensetech.org/archives/cat_ground_vehicles.html
According to these reports, the first of the USANORTH
plans for the total military takeover of the United
States, from its few remaining civilian overseers, rest
with a new series of draconian laws recently enacted by
their top Military Leaders and which, among other
things, suspends the right of habeas corpus for
Americans, and which the American Military Leaders have
ordered their courts to disallow, and as we can read as
reported by the Washington Post News Service in their
article titled " Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee
Cases ", and which says:
"Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by
President Bush this week that authorizes military trials
of enemy combatants, the administration has formally
notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer
has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus
petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison
in Cuba.
Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or
elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens,
including permanent U.S. residents. Habeas corpus, a
Latin term meaning "you have the body," is one of the
oldest principles of English and American law. It
requires the government to show a legal basis for
holding a prisoner."
Not being fully explained to the American people,
however, are that these new draconian laws do in fact
have a direct impact upon each of them, and as explained
by an American dissident group called The Future of
Freedom Foundation, and which in their article titled "
Jose Padilla and the Military Commissions Act ", states:
"Anyone who hoped that U.S. military detention of
Americans accused of terrorism expired with the transfer
of American citizen Jose Padilla from military custody
to Justice Department custody have seen their hopes
dashed by the Military Commissions Act that the
president signed into law yesterday. Although the act
limits to foreign citizens the use of military tribunals
and the denial of habeas corpus, any person, including
American citizens, can still be labeled and treated as
an "unlawful enemy combatant" in the war on terrorism.
What does that mean for the American people? It means
the same thing it did for Jose Padilla. You'll recall
that Padilla was arrested in Chicago for terrorism and
transferred to military custody, where, according to
Padilla, he was tortured and involuntarily injected with
drugs.
The government's position is that since the entire world
is a battlefield in which the war on terrorism is being
waged, U.S. officials now have the power to arrest any
American suspected of terrorism, place him in military
custody, and subject him to the same "unlawful enemy
combatant" treatment that Padilla received, until the
war on terrorism has finally been won, no matter how
long that takes."
More ominously for the American people is their future
culpability in these actions being done in their name by
their Military Leaders, and as articulated by one of the
United States most celebrated reporters, Helen Thomas,
and who has said about these horrific new laws:
"President Bush on Tuesday signed the law that legalizes
the administration's shameful treatment of detainees
suspected of terrorism. The same measure also empowers
the president to define torture. It's a sad legacy for
America and its already-tarnished world image.
The far-reaching legislation gives Bush the right to
decide what constitutes torture. The president has often
said "we do not torture," despite evidence to the
contrary - and photographs from the infamous Abu Ghraib
prison as well. The president also can set guidelines
for interrogation of prisoners. White House spokesman
Tony Snow declined to say whether "waterboarding" - in
which detainees are made to feel they are drowning -
would be permissible.
US Army Announces Readiness for Total Military Takeover
of America
US Army Announces Readiness for Total Military Takeover
of America. Sorcha Faal / whatdoesitmean.com | October
21 2006. Russian Intelligence Analysts are ...
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