I Dunno. Would I Go?
Okay, I get it – some crazy people are threatening to take over the capitol today. So, we shut the place down? I dunno. Is that what Tip O’Neill or Lyndon Johnson would do? Oh hell no.
Think about it, we have a bunch of veterans in congress who probably could secure a window or maybe a short hallway on their own. Additionally, we have all the branches of the military and from what I hear, that’s a lot of men and women with guns and crap. Damn, we’ve even got a space force which ought to be good for something other than providing a distraction and snickers with their Star Trek uniforms.
I’m thinking I’d stay and just arrest their butts.
I think I’m getting real tired of them setting the agenda and running things.
I dunno, maybe the good guys have more information than I do but if that same group is coming back with flags, stick, and bear spray, I think we can take them and send them to Guantanamo.
I don’t like the precedent of shutting down every time there is chatter about a threat. They can effectively shut the government down just by threatening insurrection. This is getting more than tiresome.
1Send cops from Oakland California and Chicago out there to augment the Capital Police.
Maybe the Ohio National Guard would also help out; they can bring their long guns.
2One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.
~ Carl Sagan
3Agree.
4These Y’all Qaeda terrorists tried to overthrow the election by stopping the pro forma Congressional acceptance of the vote. Now they may come back to install their ***king twice impeached moron sometime today? Good luck to them prying that fool off his golf links.
Meanwhile where’s Congress? Not passing the covid relief, VRA and other important legislation. Congress already receives multiple breaks throughout the year. They don’t need any snowflake excuses for another day off every time Twitter or Parler keyboard commandos threaten insurrection. Enforce the damn laws and watch how fast Y’all Qaeda folds.
5I’m inclined to give Speaker Nancy break here. It hasn’t even been 60 days from the terror they all experienced. Besides, the House passed two major pieces of legislation in the wee hours of the night and now it is up to the Senate.
However, the Capitol Police is requesting that the National Guard stay around for another 60 days. Nah. Send ’em home and take down that awful razor wire. Figure out how to secure the building without building fences and keeping everybody out.
If the vaccination goes as projected, we should be able to gather en masse on the Mall for the 4th of July. This ought to be settled by then, she wrote hopefully.
6Pull the fences and barbed wire, hold a regular session, and have some real warriors there. I suggest Marines, full kit. Hidden.
As they come up the stairs, machine gun them.
They want war? Let them have it.
7Biden has reverted to old politics. He needs to step
up to the plate.
We bomb other countries for ONE American death.
Five dead here? We bail ’em out.
8Thank you. Glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.
9There’s a sign I’ve seen on barbed wire fences along country roads for decades that I imagine “excites” most magas every time they see one.
No Trespassing
Violators Will Be Shot
Survivors Will be Prosecuted
THEN Gitmo.
10Ormond Otvos: Do YOU know what it takes to secure the Capitol?
It depends on two variables: 1. What the attackers bring to the table, 2: What you’re securing (just the Capitol, Capitol + Senate & House Office Bldgs, Capitol + the office buildings, + Congress members and staffs and buildings’ staffs>)
It is easier to defending buildings without potential hostages (or collaborators) in them. Anyone coming in can be assumed hostile. No building is defensible if someone bombs it. As I said the other day, we can expect the second attack to build on the foundation of the first, using data gained, and we can expect it to be more forceful, more damaging, more deadly, using more serious weaponry. The people behind this have no respect for tradition, architecture, hallowed halls, etc. They are willing to destroy the building to kill those inside. NOW how ya gonna defend it? When until almost the end of January the enemy was in charge of the government and doing its best to infiltrate everything?
If you don’t want to see Congress blown to bits, you move Congress somewhere else. Remove all communications devices from Congresscritters so none of them, including the treasonous scumballs, can reveal where they are. Then you sandbag what you can, try to interdict the worst of the weapons you can, and prepare for one heckuva battle, including trapping attackers in defined areas and knocking them out or killing them there.
There are spaces near enough to D.C. and far more easily secured than the Capitol, where Congress could meet when threats are made. They could be used in rotation, to lessen the threat of the bad guys knowing for sure where Congress is. House & Senate could be housed, for the time being, separately.
The fact that some Congresscritters have military exerience does not mean that they are currently combat capable or that they’re good guys. Recall that in the previous attack, Rep. Jayapal was NOT rescued or accompanied by any of the vets in the House as she–after knee surgery–struggled down many flights of stairs assisted by one Congresswoman.
What’s needed is serious planning for all contingencies, not the kind of disorganized unpreparedness seen Jan 6. It takes time to make such plans; off the cuff instant plans always have holes, but are still better than nothing. The good guys should have learned (probably have) where the vulnerabilities in the Capitol complex are, and should have started looking to the next threat by midnight on the 6th. The attack plan undoubtedly started at least 6 months ahead.
Oh–agree about the fence; static defense is only of use against smaller groups of not-determined attackers, mostly unarmed. BUT it can slow down an attack IF it’s not mechanized or aerial. Things to worry about: artillery, RPGs (rocket propelled grenades), armed drones and other aerial attacks (bad guys with airplanes and helicopters), combat level lasers. Blowing up the Capitol without even accessing nukes would be simple with the right weapons, and the right weapons exist in multiple locations close to D.C. It’s a big conspicuous building
11As Ms. Moon so thoroughly outlined @11, it ain’t simple. Until General Honoré completes his investigation and the traitors inside the Capitol are identified and neutralized, it is damn near impossible. Remember Michael Flynn? As has been reported his brother Charlie has a few bolts loose, too.
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/03/flynns-brother-was-jan-6th-call-arguing
Ready for members of the House and Senate Quack-a-Non caucuses to be arrested or detained? That would really set the Libertarians and Y’all Qaeda’s hair on fire.
12Headline: Here’s why the Pentagon lied about Michael Flynn’s brother’s role in the Capitol riots response: report
13Edit: “It wouldn’t be their best military advice to send uniformed guardsmen to the Capitol because they didn’t like the optics,”
Using Marines. If we’re using regular troops, I’m on board with using Marines, though there were a few Marines/ex-Marines) in that attacking crowd. Quantico’s a short distance away, 1st Mar Div is farther and you really want experienced troops for something like this. But “in hiding?” Look the days of standing behind a stone wall or a bush being effective are long gone. The military (and militias) routinely use means of detection that make both moving big blocks of heavily armed people and hiding them once in place difficult and time consuming. Let’s say you call for the 2st Marine Division, full loadout, to be in D.C. in 24 hours under cover, nobody to know it. That’s over 20,000 Marines in 2 infantry regiments and an artillery regiment. How? They’re being transported up from the south, several hundred miles…how? Trucks & buses? Highly visible as they come up I-95. Their equipment? Ditto. Fly them in? Same problem. Also, once the bad guys see them on the move, they’ll be targeted while in transit, same as Iraq and Afghanistan…that’s gonna be fun. Not.
Chances of moving even one active duty regiment to D.C. without the bad guys finding out…zero. In part because the military includes Trumpists, but also because they’re conspicuous even if you sent them a few at a time in civvies…their need to have their equipment and clothing (much of which isn’t going to pass a TSA screener) makes them so. And US units are used to fighting with an available mix of air, infantry, artillery. So now you’ve got more Marine aircraft, and artillery, moving from the nearest big Marine base (S. Carolina) to D.C. Nobody’s going to miss that.
Give up the secrecy. Be sure you can preclude all use of long distance weapons, bring in infantry, artillery, air craft. Put up 24 hour coverage with AWAC and alert the relevant fast-response aircraft (as on 9/11) for tactical air cover, knocking down every flying thing that isn’t part of the defense. Evacuate all buildings on the Mall and make sure they’re locked down, also all tunnels. Expect the worst, including heavy casualties. Have the force, and the will, to make it far too expensive for the bad guys to win. Make it clear the moment they cross the lines that they’re facing lethal force in large numbers, perfectly willing to shoot to kill every single person.
14I admit that I am bothered by cancelling today’s “work” at the capital due to the credible threat. But I also understand. Routinely in Texas we watch a phenomenon about decisions with the weather and school closings/delays. If one time we don’t call a delay and the roads are bad (or worse if a bus accident occurs) the next potential time they are overly cautious. This weird cycling of decision makers strikes me as happening here. “We are getting criticized for not being cautious on 6th, so we will be so now.”
And as Elizabeth Moon pointed out, the weapons brought by this identified militia is a major concern for best methods to defend the Capitol and the members of both chambers, plus their staffs.
But as a country we cannot function effectively if the Government “shuts down” anytime social media starts buzzing. Because you know there are plenty of people who would just post things to get the effect of a shutdown, if that becomes a pattern.
Meanwhile…why are these credible threat sources not being arrested and prosecuted? I want to see anyone who set foot in the Capitol on 6th as part of the “mob” or who did ANY damage to the building or the people inside the building prosecuted.
15Meanwhile, Mister Smiley who rummaged around in Pelosi’s office on 6 Jan is having a hissy fit because he’s been in jail for a Whole Month:
https://twitter.com/MacFarlaneNews/status/1367495714968920069?s=19
I’m sure I speak for the whole Salon when I say, “Aww, poor baby”.
16I agree with Ms Moon’s recommendation about the Marines. Just commandeer an available hotel. Hmm, wonder where in DC we can find one?
17“Failed actor” Jacob Chansley, a/k/a Jake Angeli, a/k/a The Psycho Who Only Eats Organic, scored an interview on “Sixty Minutes.” Celebrity is what all these losers want and CBS is handing it to them, for the ratings.
18Let the agitators gather around the fences, then have the military forces surround them from behind and apprehend them all the way to Gitmo. They can argue from Cuba.
19I’m actually okay with the House feeling some pressure and deciding to take Thursday off.
That time crunch inspired the House to pass BOTH H.R. 1, For the People Act [voting & campaign reforms] AND H.R. 1280, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. The decisions were nearly absolutely partisan, as everyone expected. So why waste time on extensive floor debates?
20Elizabeth Moon, thank you. Your words ring of expertise, and I appreciate that.
Star, me, too.
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