Please tell me I did NOT just read this.
Is the Pentagon building U.S.-based prison camps for Muslim immigrants? Evidence points to the possibility.Not that George W. Bush needs much encouragement, but Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration's domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy.
...recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may already be contemplating what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy. Top U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush's actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by "news informers," in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Is that scary enough for you? Here's more about the Detention centers...
Plus, there was that curious development in January when the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centers somewhere in the United States, to deal with "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs," KBR said.
Later, the New York Times reported that "KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space."
Oh no. Not Halliburton AGAIN?! Haven't they gorged enough on our taxdollars?
Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott and Maureen Farrell, have pursued what the Bush administration might actually be thinking.
Scott speculated that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees," in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.
Farrell pointed out that because "another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge" of immigrants flooding across the border.
Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."
Am I the only one who's scared?
Admittably it WAS Arab terrorists who attacked us on 9-11...But it was also the Japanese who attacked us at Pearl Harbor-and THOSE detention camps didn't jail dangerous Japanese nationals! Who are likely to be in these centers? Muslims most certainly... but the disturbing wording almost certainly is interpreted as including democrats, or enviromentalists, who are already being spied on and tapped... Maybe its paranoid, but with this administration, it IS the logical next step!
There also was another little-noticed item posted at the U.S. Army website, about the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program. This program "provides Army policy and guidance for establishing civilian inmate labor programs and civilian prison camps on Army installations."
The Army document, first drafted in 1997, underwent a "rapid action revision" on Jan. 14, 2005. The revision provides a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations.
On its face, the Army's labor program refers to inmates housed in federal, state and local jails. The Army also cites various federal laws that govern the use of civilian labor and provide for the establishment of prison camps in the United States, including a federal statute that authorizes the attorney general to "establish, equip, and maintain camps upon sites selected by him" and "make available … the services of United States prisoners" to various government departments, including the Department of Defense.
Though the timing of the document's posting -- within the past few weeks -- may just be a coincidence, the reference to a "rapid action revision" and the KBR contract's contemplation of "rapid development of new programs" has raised eyebrows about why this sudden need for urgency.
These developments also are drawing more attention now because of earlier Bush administration policies to involve the Pentagon in "counter-terrorism" operations inside the United States.
Ok. Scary. Read the rest. You won't sleep right. And I can't copy it all into here.
History repeats itself, and each step closer to these camps is one step closer to the totalitarian regime we've been pushing towards...
Where has American democracy gone?
You mentioned that this is not the first time that this sort of detention facility has been "required" by the United States government. I doubt many people who read blogs on this website are intimately familiar with the Japanese internment that occurred after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, but I may very well be mistaken.
Just in case you're curious as to exactly how the government has done this in the past, please visit the following links on Wikipedia which explains both the creation of Executive Order 9066 and the explanation of the Japanese Internment.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
Also, read accounts of it.
Farewell to Manzanar is my favorite, although I can't recall the authors name...