Police State Gears Up. The Recycling of Surplus Weapons by the Pentagon to “Law Enforcement”
By Dave Lindorff
Global Research
May 25, 2015
On May 18, 2015, President Obama made a surprising announcement: he ordered the federal government to reverse its standing practice of providing American police departments with surplus weapons and vehicles from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. Given declining confidence in police after a seemingly constant recent stream of fatalities involving black suspects, this newfound caution with heavy provisioning is understandable. But questions about the wisdom of militarizing police are not new.
WhoWhatWhy first wrote about the issue in February, 2014. You can read about it here.
If you’re a small town or perhaps a university security department, the US Department of Defense has got a deal for you!
Thanks to the ending of the Iraq War, and the winding down of the war in Afghanistan, the Pentagon has 11,000 heavily armored vehicles that it has no use for. Called MRAPs—Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected—they are designed to protect against AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades and IEDs. And as pitchman Paul Richards used to say of the ’69 Pontiac Firebird, “They’re practically giving them away!”
Correction, they are giving them away.
The Rest…HERE
