The Daily Times Herald is reporting that the Carroll National Guard is planning a 4 day exercise April 2nd through April 5th 2009.

From the article:

The purpose of the April 2-5 drill will be to gather intelligence, then search for and apprehend a suspected weapons dealer, according to Sgt. Mike Kots, readiness NCO for Alpha Company.

Citizens, law enforcement, media and other supporters will participate.

Troops will spend Thursday, April 2, staging at a forward operations base at Carroll. The next day company leaders will conduct reconnaissance and begin patrolling the streets of Arcadia to identify possible locations of the weapons dealer.

The primary phase will be done Saturday, April 4, when convoys will be deployed from Carroll to Arcadia. Pictures of the arms dealer will be shown in Arcadia, and soldiers will go door to door asking if residents have seen the suspect.

Soldiers will knock only at households that have agreed to participate in the drill, Kots noted.

I’m really curious to know how they’re going about getting permission. Are they asking everyone if they want to or telling them they’re coming and accepting objections? What kind of pressure are they coming?

“Once credible intelligence has been gathered,” said Kots, “portions of the town will be road-blocked and more in-depth searches of homes and vehicles will be conducted in accordance with the residents’ wishes.

In accordance with the residents’ wishes? Because the people or Arcadia actually voted on this and then directed the mayor to invite the national guard to come hang out.

“One of the techniques we use in today’s political environment is cordon and knock,” Kots explained. “We ask for the head of the household, get permission to search, then have them open doors and cupboards. The homeowner maintains control. We peer over their shoulder, and the soldier uses the homeowner’s body language and position to protect him.”

YAY!! You get to help the military search your house for illegal (any) guns. I hate being left out of all the fun.

During this phase of the operation, troops will interact with residents and media while implementing crowd-control measures and possibly treating and evacuating injured persons.

The unit will use a Blackhawk helicopter for overhead command and control, and to simulate medevacs.

The drill will culminate in the apprehension of the suspected arms dealer.

Because that’s what the military is for, chasing down suspected arms dealers in American cities.

In addition to surveillance, searching and apprehension, the exercise will also give the troops valuable experience in stability, support, patrol, traffic control, vehicle searches and other skills needed for deployment in an urban environment.

“This exercise will improve the real-life operational skills of the unit,” said Kots. “And it will hopefully improve the public’s understanding of military operations.”

Wow, you’d think the military is getting ready to spend a lot of time in American cities in the future, I wonder why?

The pre-drill work with residents is as important at the drill itself.

“It will be important for us to gain the trust and confidence of the residents of Arcadia,” said Kots. “We will need to identify individuals that are willing to assist us in training by allowing us to search their homes and vehicles and to participate in role-playing.”

Yes, going in pre-invasion and doing intel/recon is a great military tactic.

“We really want to get as much information out there as possible, because this operation could be pretty intrusive to the people of Arcadia.”

Intrusive? No, not at all.

For those of you who remember the days when Bush first went into office there were stories similar to the Obama Blackberry stories about GW having to give up his personal email, g94b@aol.com.

When I happened across one of those articles I jokingly added g94b to my Aim friends on Pidgin.

Well low and behold guess who’s back online?

I tried to IM him but I got this error:

Unable to send message: Rate to client

Not sure what that means and I couldn’t find anything on Google but it’s pretty weird, I must say.

And as of finishing the post Mr. Bush has left us and is no longer online.

Random.

Meet The Press is excluding Ron Paul from their “Meet The Candidates” feature. Let’s bombard them with emails letting them know this is bogus. Maybe a huge outcry will make them come to their senses. This is something that costs you nothing that could make a huge difference for the Ron Paul Revolution!

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You can vote on ball 755 and 756, either to save them and donate the balls to the Hall of Fame, or to destroy the balls!

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Get your sites link popularity

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A representative for Mitt Romney’s campaign said they believe the results will be fair.

Kind of weird that an article before the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa questioning the integrity of the Diebold Voting Machines to be used in counting the votes that the eventual winner of the poll stated the results would be fair.

Then again, I could be a crazy conspiracy theorist.

Here’s the original article, the quote is at the very bottom.

The PC maker plans to unveil a computer that can run Linux, Windows and other software at same time.

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