We Have Seen the Police State

And it's us. The Army now wants to deploy troops at home, which is bad enough, but there's another aspect to this. Here is a really scare post from digby, who is actually just reporting, pretty much. It's what she's reporting that's so scary:

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

[...]

“I was the first guy in the brigade to get Tasered,” said Cloutier, describing the experience as “your worst muscle cramp ever — times 10 throughout your whole body.

“I’m not a small guy, I weigh 230 pounds ... it put me on my knees in seconds.”

So men who've been fighting in Iraq will now be armed with tasers on the streets of the United States. You can be fairly sure that after what they've been trained for they'll believe that tasering someone is completely benign. After all, you get up again.

If you've been following some of the stories from Pam's House Blend, you know better: tasers are not non-lethal when misused, and they will be misused.

It gets worse:

But as bad as putting more tasers on the streets, there's an even worse possibility. The article says:

The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

I think you have to wonder if this is what they might be talking about:

The US military has given the first public display of what it says is a revolutionary heat-ray weapon to repel enemies or disperse hostile crowds.

Called the Active Denial System, it projects an invisible high energy beam that produces a sudden burning feeling.

This is about a new generation of "crowd control" weapons that cause intense pain without leaving visible marks. If that rings a bell somewhere in the back of your mind, think about this:

Dr John Wood, a biologist at UCL and an expert in the way the brain perceives pain, is horrified by the new pain weapons.

"They are so obviously useful as torture instruments," he says.

"It is ethically dubious to say they are useful for crowd control when they will obviously be used by unscrupulous people for torture."

And in case you're thinking that we need to keep them out of the hands of countries that condone torture -- well, one of those countries is developing them. That would be us.

There was a time when I would have thought this whole thing was hysterical and paranoid. Not any more. We are living today under a government that has legalized torture and which sees absolutely no problem with shooting people full of electricity on the streets of America every day in order to force compliance.

This isn't some dystopian future we're talking about. It's already here. Now they are going to empower the Army to use these non-lethal torture devices right here in America as well.

Near the end of the Army Times article comes one of the most Orwellian quotes I've seen in a long time:

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this,” said Cloutier, who took command in July. “We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”

If that doesn't scare you, nothing will.