[url=http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=30032002-024315-8298r]Boise to be test target for Marine snoops[/url]
In a bid for a more realistic training experience, Marine Corps reconnaissance teams will attempt to evade nosey neighbors and noisy dogs as they prowl the streets of Boise in a mock infiltration exercise this spring.
The city and the Marines announced Friday that about two-dozen leathernecks would attempt to infiltrate Boise during practice intelligence-gathering missions sometime between May 6 and 10.
Although the Marines routinely practice their craft in mock urban settings on military bases, some skills can only be honed in a genuine city.
The Marines will then attempt to slip into the city, spy on specific targets and then get out of town unnoticed; other Marines will act as enemy sentries guarding the target buildings.
Hirsch said the Marines would be wearing military-style clothing and would not be carrying loaded weapons. They will also not go on to private property. [b][Not THIS time!][/b] The goal is for the Marines to carry out their missions without being noticed by Boise's 186,000 citizens.
[b]Such exercises by the military are not unusual.[/b] A similar larger-scale exercise last month in North Little Rock, Arkansas frightened some residents who came upon armed troops skulking around their neighborhoods.
An Army Special Forces soldier was shot to death and another was wounded Feb. 23 during such a surreptitious exercise when they jumped a Bragg County, North Carolina deputy sheriff whom they thought was a role-playing actor in an exercise.
Despite the chance of running into a citizen with a shotgun or a snarling 100-pound Rottweiler, urban exercises are seen as an important training tool, particularly as the U.S. military finds itself increasingly involved in chasing guerilla forces such as al Qaida.
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[b]
They are systematically desensitizing the public into accepting the infiltration of cities with the military!! They are actually PRACTICING for the suspension of the Constitution!!
This is just the beginning of the incremetental push towards public acceptance of a military/police State.
Does this send alarms off in anyone elses head??
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