they all do,all of the Federal Agencies!

They piling all those weapons for an imminent war

They piling all those weapons for an imminent war

Any relationship between this, and the increasing threat as well as incidents of domestic terror? Each agency has to deal with it's own security after all.

There have been attacks on the IRS, on post office personnel, on Museums, on veterans organizations, and more.

I'm not suggesting that everyone involved is making the right choices, but it's either have them able to defend themselves, or establish a new domestic security branch of the government to do it for them.

I suppose what I am ultimately getting at, is that I have come to be extra cautious about jumping to conclusions over the years, especially with how the internet has come to so heavily influence what is and isn't brought out as "news."

It's not so much that people lie (they certainly do), as that we've seen an explosion of the basic, most common "news" motivation, of getting people excited, even before all the facts are in.

In this case, for example, we have the claims about this odd assortment of weapons, but if you look carefully, you find no specifics for each department. Only general statements, saying that such and such weapons were ordered or "stockpiled" by SOMEONE, but we don't know exactly who.

The story also fails to include anything but questions about the weapons, no sign that the reporters have investigated or discovered what reasons were given for the choices made. No details on where they have been "stockpiled," or how. So no indication of what is intended, just suspicious allegations.


There's at least one more shoe to drop with this, and we wont actually know what's going on, if anything, until it does.

By all means, questions need to be asked.

"Having a separate armed force?"

Yes indeed. As in, again, these agencies have ALWAYS had a "separate armed force," and have had to. They have had building guards. Security people. Now that there are significantly greater threats than wayward tourists and the occasional drunk employee, they must see to more training and greater preparation and arms.

So far as I have heard, the military would have to be rather significantly expanded, and a very different paranoia would ensue, were we to have, say, the Marines be detailed to provide anti-terror defense across the US.

NO

Yeah, like an American Brexit by the states under the 10th amendment?

Oh piffle, conrad. I'm not "trying to whitewash" anything.

I'm just suggesting an alternative explanation to your rather paranoid interpretation of this as being the overt preparations for the imminent overthrow of the United States government by shadowy forces led by the Department of the Interior.

The FDA does deal with illegal drugs scientifically, but the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) is who does the muscle work against the dealers.

I wonder if there's any connection between this, and the "OMG They're planning on overthrowing the government at the State level, by over-supplying SWAT teams with discontinued military hardware!" thing a couple of years ago.

It could be that after that fracas, that the military started encouraging the various agencies to stock up.

In the sixty three years I've been here, there have been dozens of "OMG THEY ARE GOING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT" stories like this.

Remember the "wargames in Texas are a cover for OVERTHROWING THE CONSTITUTION!" thing LAST year? And before that, there was the "I saw Red Chinese planes landing entire brigades in the desert!" thing a couple of years before that.

It really gets hard to feel panicky again, just because someone says that some agencies are getting what may or may not be more hardware than they really need.