U.S. Military is recruiting neo-nazis, criminals and gang members.
The following is an excerpt from " Irregular Army: How The US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, And Criminals To Fight The War On Terror ," by Matt Kennard.
(Readers should keep in mind most police departments give military veterans preferential hiring status.)
The neo-Nazi movement has had a long and tense relationship with the US military. Since its inception, the leaders of the white supremacist movement have encouraged their members to enlist. They see it as a way for their followers to receive combat and weapons training, courtesy of the US government, and then to bring what they learn home to undertake a domestic race war. Not all far-right groups subscribe to this vision – some, such as the Ku Klux Klan , claim to prefer a democratic approach – but a large portion see themselves as insurrectionary forces. To that end, professional training in warfare is a must.
The US military has long been aware of these groups' attempts at infiltration, but it wasn't until 1996 that supremacist and neo-Nazi groups were specifically banned from the military, after the murder in 1995 of two African-Americans by a neo-Nazi paratrooper stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Fogarty was recruited the year after.
He knew that the tattoo he had riding up his forearm could be a problem when it came to enlistment. In a neo-Nazi underworld obsessed with secrecy, racist tattoos remain one of the clearest indicators of extremism for a recruiter, and in an effort to police the matter, the US military requires recruits to explain any tattoos. "They just told me to write an explanation of each tattoo and I made up some stuff and that was that," he says.
The magnitude of the problem within the military is hard to quantify. The military does not track extremists as a discrete category, coupling them with gang members, and those in the neo-Nazi movement claim different numbers. The National Socialist Movement claimed 190 of its members are inside. White Revolution claimed 12. In white supremacist incidents from 2001 to 2008, the FBI identified 203 veterans. Because the FBI focused only on reported cases, its numbers don't include the many extremist soldiers who have managed to stay off the radar. But its report does pinpoint why the white supremacist movements seek to recruit veterans – they "may exploit their accesses to restricted areas and intelligence or apply specialised training in weapons, tactics, and organisational skills to benefit the extremist movement". The report found that two army privates in the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg had attempted in 2007 to sell stolen property from the military – including ballistic vests, a combat helmet, and pain medications such as morphine – to an undercover FBI agent they believed was involved with the white supremacist movement (they were convicted and sentenced to six years in prison). It also found multiple examples of white supremacist recruitment among active military personnel, including a period in 2003 when six active-duty soldiers at Fort Riley were found to be members of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, working to recruit their army colleagues and even serving as the Aryan Nations' point of contact for the State of Kansas.
The blind eye turned by the recruiters angered many investigators whose integrity was being compromised. Hunter Glass was a paratrooper in the 1980s and became a gang cop in 1999 in Fairville, North Carolina, next to Fort Bragg. "In the 1990s, the military was hard on them, they could pick and choose," he recalls. The change came after 9/11. "The key rule nowadays is ignore it until it becomes a problem," Glass tells me. "We need manpower. So as long as the man isn't acting out, let's blow it off." He recounts one episode in early 2005 when he was requested by military police investigators at Fort Bragg to interview a soldier with blatant skinhead insignia – SS lightning bolts and hammers. Glass worked with the base's military police investigators, who filed a report. "They recommended that he be kicked out," he recalls, "but the commanding officers didn't do anything." He says there was an open culture of impunity. "We're seeing guys with tattoos all the time ... As far as hunting them down, I don't see it. I'm seeing the opposite, where if a white supremacist has committed a crime, the military stance will be, 'He didn't commit a race-related crime.'
Many of the wars' worst atrocities are linked directly to the loosening of enlistment regulations on criminals, racist extremists, and gang members, among others. Then there are the effects on the troops themselves. Lowering standards on intelligence and body weight, for example, compromised the military's operational readiness and undoubtedly endangered the lives of US and allied troops. Hundreds of soldiers may have paid with their lives for this folly.
New recruits were physically, as well as mentally, unfit. In 1993, around 23% of prospective recruits would have been overweight – a pretty significant tranche. By 2006, this had increased to just over 27%, or more than a quarter of potential recruits, due partly to the use of "medical waivers" to make exceptions for overweight recruits.
The three most common barriers for potential recruits were failure to graduate high school, a criminal record and physical fitness issues, including obesity. The criminal record had been dealt with by "moral waivers" and the obesity problem by "medical waivers", but dropping the standards on educational attainment would not be so easy without seriously affecting operational readiness. There was a way for non-graduates to get into the military, however: the general equivalency degree, or GED, which can afford recruits a waiver if they score well enough on the military's entrance exam. The army accepts about 15% of recruits without a high school diploma if they have a GED. Alive to this loophole, the military instituted another program in 2008, the so-called GED Plus, to give more of America's youth the requisite qualifications they needed to go and fight. It opened its first prep school for the purpose, targeted at tough, inner-city areas.
In fact, during the "war on terror" , the resources poured into recruiting impressionable young people skyrocketed, with 1,000 new recruiters added in one year to bring high school kids round to the military's way of thinking. The Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps expanded across the nation, and no child was free from their solicitations; even 11-year-olds were taking part in the programs. One in 10 high school students in Chicago wore a military uniform to school and took classes on shooting guns from retired veterans.
One of the main incentives offered was money – a lot of money from the perspective of a 16-year-old. In 2005, the army moved to raise the average bonus given to recruits when they signed on the dotted line from $14,000 to $17,000, with the possibility of as much as $30,000 for hard-to-fill vacancies. Another of the military's slogans was "Join the Armed Forces, get a free education", an offer many of America's poorest kids couldn't turn down.
A report, Soldiers Of Misfortune , by the American Civil Liberties Union , found that the US government was actually in contravention of an international protocol prohibiting the recruitment of children into military service when they are under 18 years old. It also noted that the US military disproportionately targets poor and minority public school students, but its findings were dutifully ignored.
It took a report from the Palm Center at the University of California – a group committed to discussion of homosexuals in the military – to blow the lid on yet more figures the military was trying hard to cover up. In 2007, it published information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act that found the number of convicted criminals enlisting in the US military had nearly doubled in two years, from 824 in 2004 to 1,605 in 2006. In that period, a total of 4,230 convicted felons were enlisted, including those guilty of rape and murder. On top of this, 43,977 soldiers signed up who had been found guilty of a serious misdemeanour, which includes assault. Another 58,561 had drug-related convictions, but all were handed a gun and sent off to the Middle East. "The fact that the military has allowed more than 100,000 people with such troubled pasts to join its ranks over the past three years illustrates the problem we're having meeting our military needs in this time of war," said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center.
In 2009, the military met its recruitment targets for the first time since 2004 and once again pledged to lock out those with criminal records. Brigadier General Joseph Anderson, deputy commander of the US Army Recruiting Command, said that the "adult major misconduct" waiver, given for felony offences, was now closed and, additionally, those with a history of juvenile criminal activity would not be allowed to recruit without a high school diploma. It was an admission of guilt, but for many in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was too late.
http://www.alternet.org/books/dark-secret-us-military-neo-nazis-and-criminals-are-filling-its-ranks
Fort Jackson's military police along with local and campus police prepare for post-game crowd.
COLUMBIA, SC - Columbia police are preparing for the big crowds expected after the Georgia-South Carolina football game Saturday night.
Police officials said Tuesday they will spend more than $11,000 in overtime for 50 officers who will be assigned to Columbia's Five Points and Vista areas to work after the game.
Officials say campus police, Richland County sheriff's deputies, the South Carolina Highway Patrol and Fort Jackson's military police will help with crowd control after the game.
Assistant Police Chief Les Wiser says the plan includes barricades, DUI checkpoints and observation towers to keep the crowd under control.
"We're going to ensure order through enforcement of all laws. Of course, our highest priority will be the prevention of violent crime," said Wiser.
The increased police department comes after a shooting and two mob assaults within two hours in the Five Points area after the Missouri-South Carolina game on Sept. 23.
Wiser says regular patrols will continue and police presence in other parts of the city will not be limited.
"We are committed to ensuring that our patrols in north, south, east, west, and metro will be regular for that day," Wiser said.
(Are the military police conducting DUI checkpoints, are they interrogating citizens (students)? Are our officials getting the public accustomed to blatantly disregarding the Posse Comitatus Act?
The Act prohibits most members of the federal uniformed services (today the Army, Air Force, and State National Guard forces when such are called into federal service) from exercising nominally state law enforcement, police, or peace officer powers that maintain "law and order" on non-federal property (states and their counties and municipal divisions) within the United States.
The statute generally prohibits federal military personnel and units of the National Guard under federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Coast Guard is exempt from the Act during peacetime.
Yet, even more disturbing is the wholesale deployment of US troops inside the United States known as USNORTHCOM. As Susanne Posel of Occupy Corporatism writes:
USNORTHCOM and Leon Panetta, US Secretary of Defense, has readily admitted that US armed forces will collaborate with local law enforcement ’if called upon’.
In fact, more than 20,000 troops were brought home and readied for deployment within the US to assist in ‘civil unrest and crowd control’.
The US military will prop up the US Secret Service ‘for operational security reasons we do not discuss the numbers of military personnel and resources that are involved. Additionally, we do not share our operational plans,’ said U.S. Navy Lt. Cdr. William G. Lewis.
The extent of use of military forces on civilian matters, as reported by mainstream media (MSM) have included the reallocation of hundreds of military police officers being trained to ‘assist local authorities’ in investigation, crime scene and case building.
An estimated 500 military police and dogs will be used as ‘law enforcement battalions’. These soldiers, having served on tours in Afghanistan, will now be activated and based out of military bases across America to help local police forces.
http://www.wistv.com/story/19723876/columbia-police-prepare-for-post-game-crowd