And, if that's why Washington is stockpiling massive amounts of ammunition (hollow points, by the way), why is Homeland Security doing the buying instead of the Defense Department?
I have some theories.
Many of you will remember a story I broke a long time ago - about presidential candidate Barack Obama's little-noticed announcement that, if elected in 2008, he wanted to create a "civilian national security force" as big, as strong and as well-funded as the Defense Department.
Here's what he actually said at a campaign stop in Colorado July 2, 2008: "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
Could what we see happening now in the Department of Homeland Security be the beginning of Obama's dream and our constitutional nightmare?
We've learned more about Obama's vision since then. Maybe it's time for a review:
- He made the campaign promise to build this $439 billion domestic army, but all references to the initiative were inexplicably deleted from the copy of his speech posted on his website while others mysteriously disappeared from transcripts of the speech distributed by the campaign. That was strange - and ominous.
- At the time, I had never heard anyone use the phrase "civilian national security force" before. But I did a little homework and found out where it originated. It was first proposed by then Bush administration Defense Secretary Robert Gates. On that basis alone, I accurately predicted that, if elected, Obama would name Gates as his own defense secretary. Needless to say, when that appointment came to pass, no media outlet bothered to interview me about my foresight.
- Still during the campaign of 2008, I suggested that what Obama had in mind might be something very sinister indeed - perhaps "some kind of domestic Big Brother program."
But that brings us up to 2013 and the highly unusual stockpiling of firearms and ammo by Homeland Security - firearms and ammo that Obama would like to deny to ordinary citizens who are not members of his domestic army.
Well, I hate to say it, but I may have predicted this, too.
In a Halloween column last fall, I stated that, if re-elected, Obama would "declare a full-scale war on his domestic opposition."
I wasn't joking. I was deadly serious - so serious, in fact, that I did something I pledged I would never do: Vote for Mitt Romney. It was a matter of self-defense and self-preservation. I said then that a second term of Obama might mean we would never see another free and fair election in America. (I'm not even sure we saw one in 2012.) I suggested due process would go the way of the horse and buggy. I said I expected Obama would move to shut down or destroy all independent media. I even speculated that his biggest critics would eventually be rounded up in the name of national security.
Think about it.
Why does the civilian Department of Homeland Security need billions of rounds of ammunition?
This is the agency that is responsible for policing the border. But it doesn't.
This is the agency that is responsible for catching terrorists. But it doesn't.
So why does Homeland Security need so many weapons and enough hollow-point rounds to plug every American six times?
Maybe this is the "civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the Defense Department.
These words - "civilian national security force" - have haunted me ever since I first read them.
Obama has never explained what he meant.
He's never been called to account for that remark.
Doesn't this sound like police-state talk to you?
The U.S. Army alone has nearly 500,000 troops. That doesn't count reserves or National Guard. In 2007, the U.S. defense budget was $439 billion. No one knows what the budget is today because Congress stopped passing budgets when Obama took office.
Is Obama serious about creating some kind of domestic security force bigger and more expensive than that? Is this part of his second-term agenda?
He has also set up, as I have reported, a new homeland security bureaucracy to operate under his own direction.
I think it's worth recalling here that just over a year ago both houses of Congress unwisely passed the defense reauthorization bill that killed the concept of habeas corpus - legislation that authorized the president to use the U.S. military to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial.
That legislation would empower a lame-duck Obama to use all of the power of the federal government - constitutional and unconstitutional - to target his political enemies.
If any Republican, conservative, independent journalist, pro-life activist, returning veteran, gun-rights activist, constitutionalist, Bible believer or critic of Obama thinks they will be safe in a second term under this would-be despot, they had better think again - real fast.
The "civilian national security force" is not here to protect any of them. It's here to destroy the opposition. It's here to destroy liberty. It's here to destroy the Constitution.
Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators Syndicate. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market dailies.
What are the 1.6 Billion Hollow Point (HP) rounds for?? Note they make no sense for the following uses:
- HP Rounds Can't be Used Overseas - They are "expanding rounds" or such, designed to maximize wound cavities, and damage. (Geneva Convention) We aren't - at least 90% of the time while claiming 100% - using them in Iraq nor in Afghanstan.
- Also note that practice rounds can be made to exactly match the ballistics of HP rounds (i.e., they'll hit in the same place on the target/mannequin, but cost about 1/3 as much. ) [At a minimum, we're getting ripped off there.]
- Finally, note that at least one billion of those rounds were .40 Cal S&W. That is a PISTOL ROUND - meant and expressly designed to kill people from a short barrel up close and personal, and likely has a practical maximum effective range - in a typical pistol - of 40 yards - for a good marksmen, who would be asking for a rifle.
As Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago makes clear, the evil bastards running the Gulag, such as the KGB, et al., and in charge of investigations for "thought crimes," (in effect), through their flunkies would, when a prisoner would not confess, despite isolation, waterboarding, other forms of torture, (look up "the secret brand"), starvation, noise-caused sleep deprivation, (sounding familiar, yet?) would threaten: "Weve got nine grams for this one." which was - and IS - the approximate weight of a bullet from the guns they most typically used to kill folks in the various basement of the various stations of the Gulag and also the approximate weight of .40 cal S&W HP round. Hmm.
That's the most logical use of these purchases here and is far too uncomfortable for anyone who is basically and merely legally competent.
R.C.