The strategy of tension in Washington around Joe Biden’s inauguration is in full force, with the fear mongering by the corporate news media on the one hand and the full deployment of 25,000 National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., and another 6,000 guarding state capitals and other infrastructure in 30 states. One of the items driving the hysteria yesterday was the news a dozen National Guardsmen had been removed from the security line yesterday, for security concerns, ten of them as a result of FBI vetting, one who was fingered by his commander, and the 12th in response to an anonymous tip. Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman and National Guard Bureau Chief Gen. Daniel Hokanson refused to provide any details during a Pentagon briefing yesterday as to what offensive behavior the 12 Guardsmen were found to have engaged in, including what groups, if any, they may have been associated with, beyond “inappropriate comments and text.” This all may be a tempest in a teapot however, as no threat to today’s events was identified.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser added to the hysteria with a demand, issued yesterday during a press conference, that the 12 Guardsmen, plus any others found who cannot “pledge allegiance to ... the mission” be removed from the service. She also, according to Fox News reporter John Roberts, requested that crew served machine guns be deployed to protect the U.S. Capitol. Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli reportedly turned down the request because “weapons like that have no place in securing a civilian event.”
Adding even further to the hysteria were media reports on the arrests of two current service members and a former soldier for involvement with or plotting to commit acts of violence and terrorism. A soldier at Fort Benning has been charged with attempting to plot with ISIS to blow up the 9/11 memorial in New York City; an Army reservist who also works as a contractor in New Jersey was arrested for participating in the breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6; and a former soldier who went to Syria in 2017 to fight with the Kurdish YPG has been charged with trying to incite violence against Trump supporters in Tallahassee, Florida.
