Pentagon Going Rogue

Barry, My Liege:

Some elements in the United States military and security establishments appear to have lost their bearings. There are some Federal government programs which appear to cross the boundaries of proper civilian and military jurisdictions.

All these actions harm the National Security of the United States by violating our laws and customs.

While these actions may have sprung from the best of intentions, your responsibility as Commander-in-Chief is to ensure there is a proper and effective delineation between civilian authority and military or security authorities.

As background, this space outlined some United States government actions which appear to cross the line into violating the Constitution on January 19th of this year in a message titled ' U S Constitution Dead '.

The purpose of this message is to point out some additional actions which pose similar Constitutional questions.

Military Conducting Propaganda Against US Citizens

On April 20th of this year, USA Today reported that some members of the United States military conducted a propagangda campaign against two of its reporters who had questioned a military action.

This conduct is simply unacceptable.

My Liege, I pray you punish severely the individuals who authorized this operation.

Pentagon Requests Authority to Establish Businesses

The Pentagon has requested that it be allowed to conduct revenue generating operations with military personnel out of unifiorm in various countries around the world.

“Expansion of this authority is necessary to permit DoD to conduct revenue-generating commercial activities to protect such operations and would provide an important safeguard for U.S. military forces conducting hazardous operations abroad.”

Also unacceptable. The military is prohibited from conducting business operations by its role as subordinate to civilian power. If the military can generate its own revenues, then the civilian ' power of the purse ' will disappear.

This request should be denied forthwith and the personnel who proposed it should be re-assigned to a location where they cannot further jeopardize our national security.

ICE Conducts Mandatory and Indefinite Detention

With disregard for the Consitutional protections for citizens and for immigrants, ICE has established some 961 detention facilities as of the end of 2007.

Within these centers, ICE imprisons many immigrants indefinitely if they are refused readmission to their home country. Even if they are deemed to not pose a national security risk to the United States, many are put in mandatory detention and are not allowed any custody review.

They will be put into mandatory detention if suspected of being a threat to national security or charged with two crimes of “moral turpitude,” an “aggravated felony,” a firearms offense, or a controlled substance violation.

Crimes that did not assign jail time to the individual may subject them to mandatory detention.

Barry, my Liege, these actions are not acceptable under any definition of civilized behavior or under the United States Constitution.

We pray you address these questions.

Your faithful servant,