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DonViejo

(60,536 posts)
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 11:29 AM Nov 2018

Deployed Inside the United States: The Military Waits for the Migrant Caravan


With little electricity, no combat pay and holidays away from home, the 5,600 American troops on the southwest border are on a mission ordered by a politically determined commander in chief and a Pentagon unable to convince him of its perils.

By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Helene CooperPhotographs by Tamir Kalifa
Nov. 10, 2018

BASE CAMP DONNA, Tex. — Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Micek, a platoon sergeant with the 89th Military Police Brigade, tore open the brown packaging of his M.R.E. on Thursday. It was a chicken and noodle dish, one of the more sought-after rations because it came with Skittles. But from the cot outside his platoon’s tent at the Army’s latest forward operating base, Sergeant Micek could almost see the bright orange and white roof of Whataburger, a fast-food utopia eight miles away but off limits under current Army rules. The desert tan flatbed trucks at the base are for hauling concertina wire, not food runs.

Such is life on the latest front where American soldiers are deployed. The midterm elections are over, along with President Trump’s rafter-shaking rallies warning that an approaching migrant caravan of Central Americans amounts to a foreign “invasion” that warrants deploying up to 15,000 active-duty military troops to the border states of Texas, Arizona and California. But the 5,600 American troops who rushed to the brown, dry scrub along the southwest border are still going through the motions of an elaborate mission that appeared to be set into action by a commander in chief determined to get his supporters to the polls, and a Pentagon leadership unable to convince him of its perils.

Instead of football with their families on this Veterans Day weekend, soldiers with the 19th Engineer Battalion, fresh from Fort Knox, Ky., were painstakingly webbing concertina wire on the banks of the Rio Grande, just beneath the McAllen-Hidalgo-Reynosa International Bridge.

Nearby, troops from Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State were making sure a sick call tent was properly set up next to their aid station. And a few miles away, Staff Sgt. Juan Mendoza was directing traffic as his engineer support company from Fort Bragg, N.C., unloaded military vehicles.

Come Thanksgiving, they most likely will still be here.

more
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/10/us/deployed-inside-the-united-states-the-military-waits-for-the-migrant-caravan.html
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Deployed Inside the United States: The Military Waits for the Migrant Caravan (Original Post) DonViejo Nov 2018 OP
They will also need New Years party hats Jersey Devil Nov 2018 #1
And the Rethugs thought they got their Wellstone ruled Nov 2018 #2
they should all rent cars and drive home. they are political pawns in trump's BS 'presidency' spanone Nov 2018 #3
We really need to reprioritize our Defense Department's mission. OAITW r.2.0 Nov 2018 #4
Are the Republican Governors and their militias targeting the US Army again? Marcuse Nov 2018 #5
Trump will drop some frozen turkeys on them for Thanksgiving. Then mahatmakanejeeves Nov 2018 #6
cowardly Cadet Bone Spurs hasn't given them a thought Hermit-The-Prog Nov 2018 #7

Jersey Devil

(9,862 posts)
1. They will also need New Years party hats
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 11:32 AM
Nov 2018

At the rate the "caravan" is proceeding they may need Easter baskets too.

 

Wellstone ruled

(34,661 posts)
2. And the Rethugs thought they got their
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 12:24 PM
Nov 2018

lunch handed to them this past week. Wait till the Pictures come out of this area with the Concertina Wire strung along the River Banks and along the Hyways.

Some of use Oldsters remember those ugly Pictures coming out of Hungary ,Poland,and East Germany as people fled in the Sixties and Seventies.

OAITW r.2.0

(23,810 posts)
4. We really need to reprioritize our Defense Department's mission.
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 12:49 PM
Nov 2018

Instead of deploying troops for political kabuki theater, we should be defending our nation from climate change that's causing as trillions of dollars in damages and thousands of lives. The damage that climate change begets in the form of fires, flooding, hurricanes, and tornado's is the real and present danger to our country, not what a relatively small number of migrants represent. These same migrants could actually be helping our country fight against Climate Change and earning their right to citizenship..

mahatmakanejeeves

(56,884 posts)
6. Trump will drop some frozen turkeys on them for Thanksgiving. Then
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 05:22 PM
Nov 2018

he'll fly to Mar-a-Lago for some badly needed golf.

Hermit-The-Prog

(33,021 posts)
7. cowardly Cadet Bone Spurs hasn't given them a thought
Sat Nov 10, 2018, 06:19 PM
Nov 2018

He didn't think of them as people, just tools, when he sent them there to gin up his 'base'. He has completely forgotten about them since the election, because they're not tools for whatever he wants to do now.

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