BRATTLEBORO — If you want to know why Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has bought 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition - enough to provision a 24-year Iraq war - then get in line with the 15 U.S. representatives and an increasing number of reporters who also want to know.
Napolitano is refusing to explain the extraordinary purchase - far more than is needed to accommodate live use and weapons training during the five-year purchase period - to anyone.
Napolitano is also refusing to tell these members of Congress why she bought, through the U.S. Marines, 2,717 recently-retrofitted MaxxPro Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicles - each with a gun port - along with more than 7,000 5.56x45mm assault weapons, plus capacious 30-round magazines.
Napolitano's and, thus, the White House's arbitrary withholding of vital information from Congress and the American people is not new.
The White House's stiffing of Congress (i.e. the American people) became increasingly common right after Sept. 11, 2001, and it returned with a vengeance during the 2008 so-called financial crisis.
It should be noted here that, in this time of severe budget cuts, the 1.6 billion rounds are very expensive.
Since the DHS has no mandate to engage in non-U.S.-based enforcement, it can only be assumed that the DHS expects to use its new supplies in the U.S. and, by default, against U.S. citizens.
Napolitano is amassing and arming a domestic military that she can deploy on U.S. streets. Add that scenario to the U.S. government's growing fleet of drones being used to spy on Americans, on American soil, and a rather ugly picture emerges of the home of the brave and the land of the free in a civil rights tailspin.
For example, the context for Napolitano's buildup of armaments for domestic use against Americans includes the rule of the stomping boot of a president who has unilaterally assigned to himself the absolute right to murder any American citizen, and anyone else in the world, on American soil and anywhere else in the world without any commonly understood due process whatsoever.
This context also includes a U.S. population that, were it not for the 40 million of us receiving J.P. Morgan-administered Food Stamps, would be experiencing even more destitution and starvation than the nation experienced during the Great Depression.