Good luck to Kalifornia and New Yorky, since they can't defend themselves.
Posted on 01/22/2003 7:39:24 PM PST by Mossad1967
The next war with Iraq won't be a distant video-game conflict that we will watch live on CNN as in 1991.
It will likely be a two-front war, with the American heartland as the second battlefield.
That's the quiet but grave warning that senior military officials are beginning to sound as the Defense Department accelerates its plan to assemble nearly 200,000 troops in Southwest Asia preparing to invade and topple the Iraqi regime. Hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. military personnel are also quietly preparing for combat right here at home.
This is a threat and a response issue that has quietly emerged in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, although it has attracted scant attention or interest from Congress, the news media or public at large...
(Excerpt) Read more at sftt.org ...
Good luck to Kalifornia and New Yorky, since they can't defend themselves.
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I know what you mean, however, let's take it a step further. How about a volunteer militia, formed along the lines of the Civil Air Patrol, that could augment the U.S. Army and Marines. (There's even a past precedent for allowing the use of deadly force for such a unit. During WWII, several U-boats were sunk by those "pesky, little yellow and red airplanes".).
This would take a lot of organization, planning and coordination, but I think given the amount of firepower in American homes and an effort to mobilize "block" militias - on the theory that it's better to fight as a team rather than trying to Rambo it - it would be a tremendous addition to homeland security.
The military does contingency planning for every possible conflict everywhere. The new Northern Command was set up solely to handle Homeland Ddefense. Their whole purpose is to prepare contingency plans for invasion, terrorism and civil war. Either that or go on leave.
The fact that they are doing what they are paid to do is gratifying, but they would be doing exactly the same if Al Quaida, Saddam Hussein and North Korea didn't exist. It means nothing.
So9
The terrorists think we came after them in a big way after 9/11. They try spreading chem or bio, and it will be open season on muslims in the US.
Israel is probably a valid example to look to.
We'll probably see similar attacks here as what Israel has coped with for decades, including civilian sniper attacks, kick-burglary-style home-invasion shootings, car bombs, suicide bombers, mortar attacks on schools and other high-density targets (think: sporting events, political rallies, parades), as well as various attempts to poison our water supplies chemically (e.g. ricin, cyanide) and infect our food supply biologically (e.g. anthrax, smallpox).
In addition we'll probably get hit by a few train derailments and highway-bridge collapses.
Done in the right way, your local infrastructure could be paralyzed for up to two weeks.
Simply insure that you have two weeks worth of food and water sealed in your home, office, or location in which you spend any sizeable portion of your time. Depending upon the type of attack, its affects, and our response (e.g. a no-leave-the-house quarantine in the case of a smallpox attack), you want to be able to handle the disruption with a minimum of muss and fuss.
More able-bodied types should probably consider taking adequate precautions for the home-invasion and sniper scnearios, as well as at least being aware of what one should do (e.g. offense or defense) in the case of a near-by mortar attack.
Can you heat your home for two weeks if the power and gas is cut off? It's worth mulling over now before the real fun starts.
Sadly, no enemy is dumb-enough to attempt a full-scale ground assault on sovereign American soil, so the odds of you being in a firefight of any substance are wildly remote (which bites because I could use the target practice).
But the other scenarios ARE ALREADY being played out in Israel, so it isn't much of a stretch to figure that they will try to bring them to bear on the Great Satan at some point in the future.
Not that it will amount to much, mind you, but they'll probably try all of the above, and one of the best defenses against all of those tactics is simply to have their "possibilities" of happening in your mind already so that any or all of them don't come as a complete and total surprise to you.
For instance, answer the question of "fight or flee" now, NOT when you see a herd of people either running down your streets or huddling in your airport terminal.
We've probably already seen most, if not all, of what they can and will do. Just look over to Israel. Every terrorist tactic can be successfully dealt with by the population at large, of course, but any of us who get caught in the fringes may actually have to take some actions on our own in order to be in as good shape as our society at large...
"militia" meant every abled bodied citizen (it now legally includes women, in some states, like Texas!) "well regulated" meant properly functioning, fit for its intended purpose.
The AlQaeidians and Saddamites might get in a few nasty licks, but after that, they are toast, probably along with many people who only look like them and have similar names. Such is life.
There was an entire struture of "Home Guard" type units, guarding dams, power plants and such. Early on, there were even anti-submarine patrols by privately owned yachts, some of them armed!
Brace for A Real War at Home
By Ed Offley
The next war with Iraq won't be a distant video-game conflict that we will watch live on CNN as in 1991.
It will likely be a two-front war, with the American heartland as the second battlefield.
That's the quiet but grave warning that senior military officials are beginning to sound as the Defense Department accelerates its plan to assemble nearly 200,000 troops in Southwest Asia preparing to invade and topple the Iraqi regime. Hundreds, if not thousands, of U.S. military personnel are also quietly preparing for combat right here at home.
This is a threat and a response issue that has quietly emerged in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, although it has attracted scant attention or interest from Congress, the news media or public at large.
So you heard it here first: Every American citizen should begin crafting his or her own survival plan in event of a sudden outbreak of terrorism and military combat on home soil (see below for access to a new federal publication on this topic).
In an interview published on Jan. 18 with The Colorado Springs Gazette, the general commanding the new U.S. Northern Command said he is preparing to scramble fighter jets over U.S. cities, deploy combat troops to counter attacks by Iraqi agents or terrorists, and to redeploy Navy warships to ports or coastal areas to repel seaborne incursions.
"I think we would be hard-pressed to come up with a scenario that we haven't thought about," said Air Force Gen. Ed Eberhart, who assumed leadership of Northcom when it formally came into being last Oct. 1.
Northcom today is actually only a headquarters unit with several hundred planners operating under a small (for the U.S. military) $81-million budget this year. It doesn't have ground troops, fighter jets or battleships assigned to it but can "gain" them as needed from the armed services.
Eberhart said that he and his command have been planning a coordinated response with as many as 50 other federal agencies on a large number of "nightmare scenarios" that he declined to specify. Never mind that: It doesn't take a U.N. weapons inspector to guess what they may involve - WMD terrorism with chemical, biological or radiological (if not nuclear) devices, mass terror strikes similar to the 9/11 attacks, shoulder-fired missile launches against civilian airliners or mass murder against "soft targets" such as we have seen in Bali, Pakistan and Tunisia in recent months.
Other federal officials in recent weeks have also dropped hints that elements of the U.S. Special Operations command have already deployed in key American cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., armed with sensors to detect the presence of biological or chemical agents. This would supplement the longstanding role of the Energy Department's Nuclear Emergency Search Teams that are trained to detect and locate emissions of nuclear materials that might be part of a terrorist bomb. One well-placed official recently said that NEST is also accompanied by a force of elite military commandos codenamed "Lincoln Gold" that is charged with "killing the bad guys" when they are found - even in places like downtown Manhattan or the nation's capital.
Eberhart last month announced that Northcom would conduct its first major field exercise in February as "a means for validating our plan" to defend the United States heartland in event an invasion of Iraq results in attacks here.
At that time, Eberhart said he had seen little evidence that al Qaeda "sleeper cells" inside the United States posed a threat to the country. "In terms of our ability to deal with that type of threat, I think each passing day we become more capable," the general told The New York Times.
Other federal officials are more sanguine: Attorney General John Ashbrook warned last summer that al Qaeda retains an "active presence in the United States, waiting to strike again," and that the United States is "at war with a terrorism network operating within our borders." Incoming Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III have also warned that federal agents are keeping constant surveillance on a number of people in the United States known to have contacts with al Qaeda.
So it appears that Northcom's planning is more than a theoretical exercise.
Footnote: The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently updated its citizen preparedness manual to include protective measures in event of terrorism or other attacks. The publication, "Are You Ready? A Guide to Citizen Preparedness," can be accessed at the FEMA website.
Ed Offley is Editor of DefenseWatch. He can be reached at dweditor@yahoo.com.
Several terrorist attacks have been stopped there by armed civilians, including women, IIRC.
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