This is not meant to be anything other than me musing over this...
I have to say it seems unlikely that there are, or even have been, critical shortages of Military Police, Shore Patrol, or Security Police in any
branch in recent history.
I have known many SPs, and MPs personally, and can tell you, that if there was ever a caliber of military personnel that fit the 'sincerely
patriotic' and 'highly professional' bill, it was them. I find it highly unlikely that any but the youngest and most impressionable recruits could
possibly be convinced to perform any action that would be contrary to their constitutional mandate... The military police have always been exemplary,
in my experience. Of course, this is a generalization and not necessarily a contradiction of some of the horrors we have noted in the past. Such
things have, and still can happen. People make mistakes, believe in the wrong people, or agendas, and sometimes, people can be just ... bad.
But something else occurs to me. This sudden effort to recruit new 'specialists' tells me that we may be meant to now perceive there to be such a
shortage - OR - perhaps they had originally intended to use the amazingly robust 'contractor' (i.e. private) security forces now incorporated in the
US.
Many of us may remember the alarming increase in construction of private prisons in the recent past. Many may have imagined, or expect the worst.
Personally, I fear the potential for abuse. But perhaps their plan was disrupted after the PR debacle that was/is Black Water, Xe, or whatever, they
can't easily exploit the need to man these prisons, without tipping their hand and revealing that it had been the plan all along. The Pentagon is,
after all, THE prime target for corporate exploitation.
Now they have to justify these prisons, or lose the investment they had tricked the tax-payers into making. By running all these projects through the
Pentagon as military contracts, it could be easy to conceal the nature of the exploit. This might be especially true if we are already distracted by
national security issues, both real, and contrived (and all the Hollywood/Madison Avenue public manipulation that our showbiz politicians add to it.)
So they pick up a whole new crop of military recruits - for particular application to these prisons.
You know, for a country that has the highest per capita prison population while simultaneously enduring one of the deepest and most far-reaching
economic disasters in history; we sure have managed to foster a serious blossoming of of the private prison industry.
From there, it will be a short hop to establishing a larger scale private law 'enforcement' industry, no?
Sorry about the rambling... It's late for me....





