Anti-Palin rally calls for Colberg removal

TROOPERGATE: More than 1,000 protesters gather in downtown Anchorage park.

A protest slamming Gov. Sarah Palin's handling of the state's so-called Troopergate investigation -- and calling for the attorney general to lose his job -- drew more than 1,000 people to the Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage on Saturday.
Protesters chanted "recall Palin!" as organizers told the crowd to push state legislators to keep after their investigation into the governor's firing of her top cop.
An investigator hired by the lawmakers is scheduled to present his report on Oct. 10.
"This report needs to be released. Not just for us ... it needs to be released for all those people in the Lower 48 who are going to make a decision on Nov. 4," Democratic blogger Linda Kellen Biegel told hundreds of protesters gathered on the Park Strip grass.
The McCain-Palin campaign dismissed the rally as nothing more than a partisan strike from Barack Obama loyalists. [Pointer: Of course it is. Barack Obama stands for enforcing truth and openness!]
The crowd lined I Street, waving signs that said "Steady on her heels, wobbly on her words" and "Dude, where's my governor?" at passing cars. They dressed as Richard Nixon, or Hillary Clinton, or as Palin herself, holding a sign that said "hold me accountable."
A group calling itself Alaskans for Truth organized the event, which at times resembled an Obama campaign rally.
Between speeches, Anchorage singer-songwriter Libby Roderick led the crowd in a chorus of "We're gonna keep on moving forward" and "Stand tall for Obama." Obama volunteers signed up supporters under a nearby tent.
"Clearly this was an Obama rally and nothing else," Palin campaign spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said in an e-mailed statement. "The rally proves the point of partisanship which the Governor has been trying to remove from the investigation in an effort to get a fair and just result."
Organizer Camille Conte, a radio host on left-leaning KUDO 1080 AM, said the event was about holding Palin to her word, and the pro-Obama message wasn't supposed to be part of the rally.
"It was hard to stop that once it started, and the crowd seemed to want it," she said.

FIGHTING DELAY TACTICS
Next to the political fliers sat petitions calling for the removal of Attorney General Talis Colberg.
On July 28, the Legislative Council -- a bipartisan group of 12 state lawmakers -- voted to launch an abuse-of-power investigation into Palin's firing of Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan.
Some Republican lawmakers have tried to get the Legislative Council, or the court, to delay the investigation until after the presidential election.
Rally organizers handed out talking points Saturday urging people to e-mail and call council members and tell them to stick with the probe.
Palin initially said she'd cooperate with the investigation. Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain announced Palin as his running mate Aug. 29, and the McCain camp has argued that the investigation became a partisan witch hunt spurred by Democrats.
Colberg is suing to quash the Legislature's subpoenas of Palin aides in what's become a struggle between the state's executive and legislative branches of government.

DOGGED PROTESTERS
Nicole McCullough came to the rally with her grand-niece and grand-nephew -- twins born the day before Palin's youngest son, Trig. McCullough wore a pitbull mask with giant red lips, a reference to a Palin's joke about hockey moms, pit bulls and lipstick at the Republican National Convention.
The twins held pit bull masks too.
A Hillary Clinton supporter earlier in the election, McCullough called Palin "a female Dan Quayle" and carried a sign that read: "Gov. Pitbull: call off your McCain dogs."
It was a reference to the McCain spokespeople and attorneys, including the self-described "Truth Squad" who have been defending the governor in regular Anchorage press conferences.
The Outside lawyers are clogging Alaska's legislative process, McCullough said.
The McCain camp says it's the other side that's making things political. For example, they say statements by Sen. Hollis French, who is overseeing the investigation and said the probe could end in impeachment, show Democrats are gunning for the governor.
The rally stretched past two hours, with a string of speeches from bloggers, the head of the troopers union and Monegan's mom. Someone read a written statement from Democratic Anchorage Rep. Les Gara -- which at one point ignited a chant of Obama's campaign slogan, "Yes we can" -- and calling for a "shout out" to French.
Like a similar rally two weeks earlier, the event gathered anti-Palin protesters from all corners. Some held signs saying "My body, my rights," while others criticized her views on aerial wolf-hunting.
Unlike last time, no organized counter-protest appeared.

Brigade homeland tours start October 1, 2008

Photo: The Alleged Terrorists


3rd Infantry’s 1st BCT trains for a new dwell-time mission. Helping ‘people at home’ may become a permanent part of the active Army
By Gina Cavallaro - Posted at Army Times: Monday Sep 8, 2008 6:15:06 EDT

The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle, helping restore essential services and escorting supply convoys. Now they’re training for the same mission — with a twist — at home.

Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months, the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks.
It is not the first time an active-duty unit has been tapped to help at home. In August 2005, for example, when Hurricane Katrina unleashed hell in Mississippi and Louisiana, several active-duty units were pulled from various posts and mobilized to those areas.
But this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to NorthCom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.
After 1st BCT finishes its dwell-time mission, expectations are that another, as yet unnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that the mission will be a permanent one.
“Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission. How the [Defense Department] chooses to source that and whether or not they continue to assign them to NorthCom, that could change in the future,” said Army Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom future operations. “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year.”
The command is at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo., but the soldiers with 1st BCT, who returned in April after 15 months in Iraq, will operate out of their home post at Fort Stewart, Ga., where they’ll be able to go to school, spend time with their families and train for their new homeland mission as well as the counterinsurgency mission in the war zones.
Stop-loss will not be in effect, so soldiers will be able to leave the Army or move to new assignments during the mission, and the operational tempo will be variable.
Don’t look for any extra time off, though. The at-home mission does not take the place of scheduled combat-zone deployments and will take place during the so-called dwell time a unit gets to reset and regenerate after a deployment.
The 1st of the 3rd is still scheduled to deploy to either Iraq or Afghanistan in early 2010, which means the soldiers will have been home a minimum of 20 months by the time they ship out.
In the meantime, they’ll learn new skills, use some of the ones they acquired in the war zone and more than likely will not be shot at while doing any of it.
They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.
Training for homeland scenarios has already begun at Fort Stewart and includes specialty tasks such as knowing how to use the “jaws of life” to extract a person from a mangled vehicle; extra medical training for a CBRNE incident; and working with U.S. Forestry Service experts on how to go in with chainsaws and cut and clear trees to clear a road or area.
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.
Homeland Security
“It’s a new modular package of nonlethal capabilities that they’re fielding. They’ve been using pieces of it in Iraq, but this is the first time that these modules were consolidated and this package fielded, and because of this mission we’re undertaking we were the first to get it.”
The package includes equipment to stand up a hasty road block; spike strips for slowing, stopping or controlling traffic; shields and batons; and, beanbag bullets.
“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.”
The brigade will not change its name, but the force will be known for the next year as a CBRNE Consequence Management Response Force, or CCMRF (pronounced “sea-smurf”).
“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.”
While soldiers’ combat training is applicable, he said, some nuances don’t apply.
“If we go in, we’re going in to help American citizens on American soil, to save lives, provide critical life support, help clear debris, restore normalcy and support whatever local agencies need us to do, so it’s kind of a different role,” said Cloutier, who, as the division operations officer on the last rotation, learned of the homeland mission a few months ago while they were still in Iraq.
Some brigade elements will be on call around the clock, during which time they’ll do their regular marksmanship, gunnery and other deployment training. That’s because the unit will continue to train and reset for the next deployment, even as it serves in its CCMRF mission.
Should personnel be needed at an earthquake in California, for example, all or part of the brigade could be scrambled there, depending on the extent of the need and the specialties involved.
Other branches included
The active Army’s new dwell-time mission is part of a NorthCom and DOD response package.
Active-duty soldiers will be part of a force that includes elements from other military branches and dedicated National Guard Weapons of Mass Destruction-Civil Support Teams.
A final mission rehearsal exercise is scheduled for mid-September at Fort Stewart and will be run by Joint Task Force Civil Support, a unit based out of Fort Monroe, Va., that will coordinate and evaluate the interservice event.
In addition to 1st BCT, other Army units will take part in the two-week training exercise, including elements of the 1st Medical Brigade out of Fort Hood, Texas, and the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade from Fort Bragg, N.C.
There also will be Air Force engineer and medical units, the Marine Corps Chemical, Biological Initial Reaction Force, a Navy weather team and members of the Defense Logistics Agency and the Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

One of the things Vogler said they’ll be looking at is communications capabilities between the services.
“It is a concern, and we’re trying to check that and one of the ways we do that is by having these sorts of exercises. Leading up to this, we are going to rehearse and set up some of the communications systems to make sure we have interoperability,” he said.
“I don’t know what America’s overall plan is — I just know that 24 hours a day, seven days a week, there are soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that are standing by to come and help if they’re called,” Cloutier said. “It makes me feel good as an American to know that my country has dedicated a force to come in and help the people at home.”

BUT WHY WILL THE MILITARY USE WEAPONS OF MASS
DESTRUCTION AT HOME?

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