How To Fan Paranoia

Conduct military training exercises in big cities with helicopters and gunfire (blanks, apparently, but machine guns are still pretty scary) without bothering to tell the neighbors or even the fire department -- like in Houston.


Or Miami:

Robert Small at American Thinker points to the rather astonishing number of these exercises happening in urban areas in recent months.   The argument is that these exercises are required for the military to maintain ability to fight in urban environments overseas -- but I thought Obama was getting us out of those overseas battles, and how many urban environments does Afghanistan have?

The combination of the vast quantities of ammo that Homeland Security is buying (supposedly, to get a better price) and these sort of urban exercises are making some of my friends who aren't particularly paranoid just a big concerned.  It makes statements like Small's in that American Thinker article not completely ridiculous:

After reading Malcolm's article on air last Friday, radio host Mark Levin dismissed internet chatter about the DHS preparing for domestic insurrection.  He thinks it more likely that the government's preparing for a catastrophe of their own making: "the collapse of our financial system, the collapse of our society, and the potential for widespread violence" in the streets that accompanies such crises. 

That would certainly explain the Black Hawks as well.  It's clear from his inaugural and SOTU addresses that Obama intends to double down on government spending, taxes, regulations, executive orders, collectivism, and unchecked immigration with no budget proposals or plan for reducing our national debt in sight.  He's determined to accelerate America forward Thelma and Louise-like into the canyon of fundamental transformation, and both local law enforcement and the military will need to be ready at the scene when it all comes crashing down.

A domestic crisis would also justify the billions of dollars in military surplus the DOD has been gifting to local governments through its Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO).  Chicago Channel 7's I-Team has been investigating "weapons of war" that are "ending up in Chicago and the suburbs."  Law enforcement is being so broadly defined that M-16 rifles and a humvee went to a Catholic university, and an "arsenal of combat rifles" went to Brookfield zoo.  What sense does it make to arm a zoo unless someone envisions a scenario where desperate, starving urbanites are forced to turn it into a hunting ground after grocery shelves run empty?

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/02/clearing_away_the_rubblewith_black_hawks_tanks_and_loads_of_ammo.html#ixzz2LmbDkj3q

UPDATE: Here's a January 30, 2013 Houston Chronicle article about Special Forces training at Galveston County's courthouse.

UPDATE 2: A reader suggests that our government is preparing for Iranian terror attacks in the U.S. in the event of intervention against Iran.  This is a plausible explanation, especially because some of these are joint exercises with local police, but why not say so?  "We are conducting military readiness drills for urban combat against foreign terrorist groups in the unlikely event that such take place."