[Atsilvquodi]

Done!

Bump - currently 73% for "Absolutely".

[Dakmar]

Should we put armed troops at the borders?

Total Votes = 1120

Absolutely. We are leaving gaps for terrorists. (817) 73%
Yes, it's probably good extra protection. (63) 6%
Maybe. Depends on where and how they're used. (54) 5%
No, Tancredo is nuts and prejudiced, period. (174) 16%
Undecided. Need more information. (9) 1%
No opinion whatsoever. (3) 0%

[CyberCowboy777]

FReeped!

Bump

[Reaganwuzthebest]

If we can close everyone else's border with the military, we can close our own. I don't think the military should be arresting people, the border patrol can do that. But their presence will be a deterrent. We are being invaded after all.

[3AngelaD]

I haven't been to Colorado for several years, but isn't the Denver Post a liberal rag that regularly preaches the benefit of open borders and runs sob stories about poor illegal alien aggravated felons who are getting deported?

[b4its2late]

Total Votes = 1341

Conservatives - Absolutely. We are leaving gaps for terrorists. (939) 70%

Republicans - Yes, it's probably good extra protection. (68) 5%

Conservative Dems - Maybe. Depends on where and how they're used. (60) 4%

Liberals - No, Tancredo is nuts and prejudiced, period. (260) 19%

Moderates - Undecided. Need more information. (11) 1%

Hippies from the 60's (aka College Profs) - No opinion whatsoever. (3) 0%

[medlarebil]

http://www.house.gov/tancredo/

Above is the link to go directly to the petition.

[Enemy Of The State]

What a farce! Obviously the poll wasnt going as they hoped so they have shut down the polling so that you cant vote. STOP MEXICO!! PUT TROOPS ON THE BORDER!

[John H K]

Hope you meant for everyone to vote against such a stupid and ill-informed proposal. The guy who proposed it admitted he didn't have the foggiest idea how many troops it would take, and I'm sure he didn't speak to anyone in the military or talk to anyone who knew anything about the military.

The military isn't designed to be border police, and using it to do so will destroy its combat capability, though I suspect people with no military knowledge may naively think it's a good way to keep troops occupied.

For one thing, for anything more than a purely symbolic presence that actually stops anything, you're talking about far more troops than I believe people realize...I suspect in the hundreds of thousands.

Using the military for anything other than combat and training for combat destroys combat capability. That's why the military despises "peace-keeping" and Bush is frantically trying to get out of peace keeping around the world. Units that take part in peace-keeping actually have their combat readiness destroyed and it takes months of retraining when they get home to get them prepared again.

Combat doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to "peace-keeping" and neither does it resemble policing the border. Time taken doing that destroys combat training time. Trying to stop assorted unarmed Mexicans crossing a border has absolutely nothing to do with learning to blow away an Iraqi Republican Guard Division, shooting up an Al Qaeda camp in Afghanistan, or stopping a million North Koreans streaming over the DMZ.

The current military is VERY overstretched in terms of manpower; there aren't thousands of guys just sitting around doing nothing that you can put on the border. Also, the US military isn't organized at all for border patrol duty; other countries, like Russia, have "Border Guards" (the NKVD) that are essentially an entirely separate, self-contained military force with a different organization and TO&E.

And you can't call up several hundred thousand National Guard and put them on permanent, unending active duty to do it, either.

And once recruits find out that their most likely duty will be wandering around West Texas picking up Mexican families and sending them home, you're going to see recruitment and retention in the Army, already a problem, going in the toilet.

If you want to do it, you have two options:

1) Reinstitute the draft, and I guarantee that will NEVER happen, particularly for this purpose. Not a snowball's chance in hell, or

2) Go for a MASSIVE expansion of the current border patrol or creation of a brand new American NKVD. You're talking about billions and billions and billions of dollars here. There's no free lunch where you just grab some troops we already have and slap them on the borders.