As Pentagon orders “several thousand” more troops to border
Democrat-led House Armed Services Committee questions Department of Defense officials over troop deployments to US-Mexico border
By
Kevin Martinez
31 January 2019
The newly organized House Armed Services Committee held its first hearing Tuesday since the Democratic Party took control of the House of Representatives on January 3, to hear testimony from Pentagon officials about the Pentagon’s recent deployment of active-duty troops to the US border with Mexico.
The fraudulent character of the claim that the House committee provides “oversight” into the vast, worldwide operations of the Pentagon, the largest military machine on the planet, was demonstrated the day of the hearing. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan told reporters at the Pentagon that “several thousand” more troops would be deployed to the border, a fact that was not mentioned by the officials who testified before Congress.
Members of the Armed Services Committee, which has jurisdiction over the Pentagon’s $700 billion annual budget, asked questions about the cost of the deployment at the border and its impact on other military operations during a three-hour hearing. President Trump first ordered regular troops to the border last early November, just before the election, and the Pentagon has renewed their deployment until at least September 30.
Representative Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington state who supported theinvasion of Iraq and has opposed curbs on domestic spying by the National Security Agency, set the tone for the hearing right from the start, criticizing Trump’s troop deployment, not as an attack on democratic rights, but as a waste of military resources.
Pointing the decline in the number of people…