US Military To Occupy Homeland - Apparent Violation of Posse Comitatus Act

An article entitled Pentagon To Detail Military To Bolster Security appeared on the PMSNBC website detailing a plan that will call for the deployment of 20,000 US troops within the borders of the United States for "Homeland Security" purposes. This begs the question... is "Homeland Security" a military issue, or a law enforcement one? Since the DHS seems to be its own vertical between the Justice Dept. and the Defense Dept. How does DHS leverage the military for the purpose of Law Enforcement?

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 strictly forbids the use of the US Military for law enforcement purposes with the exception of severe civil unrest as outlined in the Insurrection Act such as the LA Riots of 1992. There was an attempt by the Bush Administration along with others to modify the PC Act to allow for deployments, but that has since been repealed in its entirety. (See HR 5122 John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007)

In a recent article in the Army Times which discusses the issue of domestic deployments by the 1st Battalion Combat Team (BCT)...

"The 1st BCT’s soldiers also will learn how to use “the first ever nonlethal package that the Army has fielded,” 1st BCT commander Col. Roger Cloutier said, referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals without killing them.

The package is for use only in war-zone operations, not for any domestic purpose."

So does this mean the Army will be using Deadly Force against its own citizens?!?! Apparently the Non-Lethal Package is not designated for use within the US.

Folks, I don't know about you, but this scares the crap out of me... I never thought I'd see the day when our own troops may be leveraged against our own citizens with apparent use of deadly force... unless of course the above designation for the 1BCT's deployment package changes. This is no longer the 'tinfoil hat' type scenarios.. this is for real.

**UPDATE: There is an article on Mens News Daily that makes the assertion that the deployment is not in violation of Posse Comitatus. The grounds are technical in nature, that is military personnel will not be handing out parking tickets or replacing police in quelling the occasional domestic dispute, however, I take strong umbrage with his assertion that a discontented public that for instance has a problem to the point of angry 'pitchfork' outrage would be then considered "an enemy of the state" or as the Sgt. put it, with reference to the oath taken by servicemen "to defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic" ... a domestic enemy.

I am a Veteran myself. I took that oath as well. However when a people feel the need to rebel, via the insurance of the 2nd Amendment as outlined by our Founding Fathers. So we have here a quandry. I have often wondered why there have been questions that some troops have been given by their commands..."If necessary, could you open fire on American Citizens?" Now I see the reason for those questionnaires. It begs the question, what does the government have in its collective mind that requires this sort of force? A Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, or Marine has the right to refuse any order that he or she finds morally objectionable. I would hope they would come to that conclusion if given orders to gun down a crowd of their fellow citizens.

A thought here as well... as per that oath... it could be defined that a domestic enemy could even be the government itself that the Constitution needs protection from.