Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2021/01/11/couple-documents-capitol-siege-horrified-by-what-they-saw-heard.html
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“Purposefully understaffed” makes me think that there should be some heads rolling somewhere. I also wonder if there is an email chain to be found saying something like “Let’s stay out of this one”.
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And it wasn’t just the white nationalists, Second Amendment radicals, and QAnon boneheads. I can’t adequately describe the blood lust we heard everywhere as we walked over the Capitol grounds, even from mild-mannered looking people. The most alarming part to me was the matter-of-fact, causal ways that people from all walks of life were talking about violence and even the execution of “traitors” in private conversations, like this was something normal that happened every day. (Source: Threader - Good Twitter threads every day)
This is so important to emphasise again and again. Not all fascists wear uniforms or do paramilitary cosplay. With at least 27% of the population actively and enthusiastically supporting right-wing populism and virulent white supremacy, some of the “nice” people that Americans run into every day may be part of this toxic movement.
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So was this just unpreparedness, or did direction come down from trump through his recently installed defense appointments to leave the Capitol vulnerable?
Given the comparison they make with other rallies it seems like too many coincidences:
- Weak police force at the Capital
- No help from the Guard, City, or State Troopers from adjacent VA or MD
- No control on what crowd carried into the rally area
- trumps incitement to “fight like hell”
Sorry –– the stars did not just align for trump. We have to get to the bottom of this, and punishment dolled out.
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“It’s a conspiracy by the libs to make us patriots look bad when we try to storm the Capitol and no-one stops us!”
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It was either gross incompetence (the chief of Capitol Police is already resigning), complicity, or directed from the higher ups (all the way to Trump). I expect this will shake out with a congressional investigation.
I still hate twitter for long form information, but that Twitter Threader link was very helpful.
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Ohhh but there was PLENTY of planning. Says a pentagon memo:
Yeah, another load of steaming BS.
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I hope their warning of further violence is being taken seriously. I don’t have a sense of these nut jobs thinking it’s over.
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Well the Capitol Police are not part of the executive branch. Trump CAN’T give them any orders, they don’t work for him. Certainly some of the riot police in the videos are actually Washington DC city police rather than Capitol police. Notably, the cop that was videoed getting pinned in a doorway. Their badges, although the feature the Capitol building are a different shape, and their helmets were marked “MPDC” (Metropolitan Police for the District of Columbia) But it certainly does appear that the Capitol Police were undermanned and underprepared. And responsibility for that goes to the leadership. How much of that was incompetence and how much was politically motivated is unclear, but in general, police in the US have a LONG history of treating right wing political violence as a lesser threat than left wing political violence.
I don’t think that the violent right wing terrorists will be at all deterred. But perhaps the much larger right wing crowd of nut cases that they are surrounded with will think twice. The Elizabeths from Knoxville might begin to have just the slightest inkling that REAL violence is not like the movies.
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The (newly resigned) chief of the Capital Police has stated that he made a half-dozen requests before the event for National Guard support and was denied by the Senate Sargent at Arms and the White House because “the optics would look bad” to have a strong military presence on view at the Capital Building.
There were reports from inside the White House on that day that Trump delayed deploying the National Guard at least twice because “he wasn’t ready to do that yet.”
Trump’s “lawyer”, Giuliani made multiple calls to Republican Senators’ offices during Trump’s speech (the end of which marked the crowd’s departure for the Capital) asking them to slow down the count because “we aren’t ready, yet.”
If it wasn’t planned days in advance, the Capital Riot was definitely anticipated and deliberately executed on that day.
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I hope that this couple returns for the inauguration. I have a feeling that it might need documenting.
"The Pentagon plans to have 10,000 National Guard troops in Washington, DC, by Saturday as troops already earmarked for the inauguration begin to arrive, according to a senior defense official.
The official said the Army is currently working on new requests from the DC government, Park Police and US Capitol Police, so the amount of forces could still grow higher. " -CNN
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I understand, however:
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So what does did he spend his $460m a year budget on? (I’m sure I read that was the Capitol Police budget in a post here on BB in recent days.)
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C’mon, Trump administration. “Bad optics?” You reap what you sow.
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Uh that’s not even a joke. That will become canon very soon. There are people who still claim FDR “caused” the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
But it’s going to get so complicated. Because, we know that Antifa was the group committing all the atrocities. (It was all a false-flag!) So, in sum: the Capitol Police let themselves be overrun by leftists, to make Trump/rightists look bad.
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Looks like the NY Bar might have had enough of Rudy making lawyers look bad:
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Republicans spent years demanding Hillary Clinton go to prison for failing to provide adequate security for US diplomats in Benghazi and she wasn’t even the one who incited the attack.
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I think we can rule out unpreparedness. The number of cops on hand was less than the amount you would expect for even a standard Trump rally. Pair that with the reporting about other agencies being restricted and it moves from unlikely to almost absurd. The big question, at this point isn’t if there was an intentional aspect, but rather who they were and what their motivations were.
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FBI says credible threat. What are the chances the Guard just slaughters these guys next time.
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I saw some comment (I forget where now) that they were reeling a bit after all the negative attention they got for the over reaction to the BLM, etc, protests over the northern summer. The implicit statement seemed to be “Oh, c’mon - you moaned that we had too many cops on the street last time, now you’re moaning that there weren’t enough! Make your mind up, willya!” … as if one protest is exactly like another insurrection.
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