Is the H1N1 scare going to provide an excuse for martial law in the U.S.? It’s possible, suggests John Griffing in the American Thinker.
Remember President Obama’s Executive Order basing 80,000 active troops at home for the first time in the history of the peacetime military establishment to “help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack….”
Now connect that information to the recent announcement that the military has established regional deployment locations all across the United States to “assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials.”
Civil unrest and crowd control? Significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall? What do they know that we don’t?Swine flu has been made into a crisis in the minds of the public, even though swine flu, or H1N1, is the most non-lethal “killer” virus ever uncovered. As a cataclysmic event demanding military assistance, it ranks near zero. It is doubtful whether swine flu could even be classified as an “epidemic,” much less a “pandemic.”
Regular influenza, the common flu, kills 36,000 people every year. The 1918 flu pandemic killed an estimated 50-100 million people worldwide over a period of two years, approximately one-third the population of Europe at that time. Global swine flu deaths topped just 1,000 this year.
But President Obama is predicting death tolls of 90,000 and possible infection of up to half the US population.While every life matters, in statistical terms swine flu is a comparatively minor problem, which makes the hype by those in government and the military all the more suspicious.
The National Guard is even practicing mock takeovers of public schools in the event of an “H1N1 riot,” a description that elicits mixed responses. What kind of riot could arise out of a flu that has only killed 1,000 worldwide? Washington certainly seems to be looking for some rationale for enhanced domestic military involvement, whether credible or not.
Martial law has essentially been on the table since President Obama took office, thanks to the Bush Administration’s dramatic revisions of the Posse Comitatus Act —which limited deployment of the US military at home—in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. With impeccable timing, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has gone before Congress asking for the unprecedented authority to base 400,000 soldiers in communities all across the United States.
Be sure to read the rest, and then take a look at some of the comments.
LLE
