Law enforcement across the country is being militarized at an alarming rate, with the Obama admin bringing in machines of war to American cities through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally made for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
For example, the city of Washington, Iowa, with a population of only 7,000, will receive their own MRAP (Mine Resistance Ambush Protected), as reported by The Daily Iowan.
Their excuse is, of course, that it’s needed for school shootings and terrorists.
Got bullets? The 2nd American Revolution is coming soon…
Sometimes the news is just so drearily awful that you have to sit back and almost appreciate the pure comedy induced by it.
Take this item from Washington, Iowa, where the local police have recently acquired an MRAP vehicle (short for Mine Resistance Ambush Protected) through a Defense Department program that donates excess vehicles originally produced for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to local police departments across the United States, including other Iowa towns such as Mason City and Storm Lake.
The MRAP weighs an impressive 49,000 pounds, stands 10-feet tall, and possesses a whopping six-wheel drive. Originally designed to resist landmines and IEDs, it sure seems like the MRAP will come in handy for the notorious war zone otherwise known as Washington County, Iowa.
If you’re having a bad day, I highly recommend watching a video produced by the Des Moines Register in which Washington police officials try to justify the possession of a vehicle it clearly has no use for. The excuses range from school shootings (which are an actual concern but an MRAP seems like overkill) to a terrorist attack happening in central Iowa (because if there’s any place that seems ripe for a high-profile terrorist attack it’s Washington, Iowa, population 7,000).
I mean if the police were realistic, they could come up with actual reasons to use their MRAP/machine of doom. Drunken high-school house parties could be broken up by ramming the MRAP into the side of the building. Clearly, people who have been trying to curtail underage drinking have not seriously considered the serious deterrents to slamming down a few Hamms in your parents’ house caused by a soulless war machine demolishing your kitchen.
In all seriousness however (and it is hard to be serious about a situation so absurd) this little anecdote does highlight several disturbing trends in the American cultural landscape. Most blatantly, the collective paranoia that’s gripped post-9/11 America so tightly that small-town Iowa police officers are convinced that, any minute, the whole state could become engulfed in some Red Dawn-style conflict that would require the use of a device such as the MRAP.
But, a little more subtly, this incident reflects the out-of-control militarization of the police that’s been occurring across small towns and big cities from Los Angeles to Waterville, Maine.
As Radley Balko, the author of the book The Rise of the Warrior Cop, an expose of the police militarization of the last decade, found, in 2006 alone the Pentagon, “distributed vehicles worth $15.4 million, aircraft worth $8.9 million, boats worth $6.7 million, weapons worth $1 million and “other” items worth $110.6 million to local police agencies.”
Obama meant THE PEOPLE should not have weapons of war… on the street. The state is something else altogether. The state is above the people. Of the people, by the people and for the people is so passé.
Get ready America it’s coming.
he is doing this all across our country.Believe me when I say he is going to have marshll law declared and hje is going to stay in office for who knows how many more terms. He has had this planned before he got elected
You know, I was just driving the family vehicle to the store and for some reason I never hit a mine or an IED … so why would the police dept. need such things ??? Is this administration planning a bizarre over throw of government ???
Why are our soldiers and commanders obeying anti constitution orders??? Why don’t those commanders tell the dictator to stand down? They are in place to protect us not annul are us
Do we really believe anything coming out of this regime?? We don’t need weapons of war to protect schools, do they think we are stupid? Pray, pray and don’t stop praying for this country to be restored to its original constitution and bill of rights, and that our citizens are supernaturally protected from this evil.
Americans need to remember that their most valuable weapon against tyranny is the vote!
do they come with the weaons?
because the police fear the public in mass revolution senerio….and they should when the soverign people of this country come together…they don’t run chit.
hey fred martial law elimintaes that small probelm for them