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"The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials," the Washington Post reported on December 1. "The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said."
The Post article notes there are some critics who worry that the new move may "possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement." However, the Bush administration's new policy of deploying federal troops in American cities and communities does more than "possibly undermine" the Posse Comitatus Act; it guts the act and the protections that it provided American citizens against military dictatorship.
The Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, in response to abuses by federal troops during Reconstruction after the Civil War, forbade the president's use of U.S. Army troops ...
Source: HighBeam Research, 20,000 troops to be deployed in United States.(Inside Track)