Exercises in the San Francisco East Bay, March 1999[edit]
A four-day military exercise was planned and executed in Oakland, California in March 1999. A combined force of 6,000 Marines and 700 sailors took control of the grounds and buildings of the defunct Oak Knoll Naval Hospital invaded the defunct Naval Air Station Alameda on the second day as part of a national effort called Operation Sea Dragon.[citation needed]

After original plans to use the San Francisco Presidio were rejected by the National Park Service[6] based on the size of the spectacle and its inherent environmental damage, and a trial run at the Naval Postgraduate School beach in Monterey, California,[7][8] Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and Alameda Mayor Ralph Appezzato welcomed the Marines to use their cities as a proving ground.[9]

Warfare Inside the U.S.

The U.S. military admits openly that they are also planning for military warfare within U.S. borders. General C.C. Krulack, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, writes in the Examiner (Jan. 17) that Marine "deployments may well be in support of our own cities in response to possible terrorist acts in the future." This same General Krulack was closely associated with a major CIA domestic campaign that spread disinformation through media news services.

Marine documents on "Urban Warrior" include photos of New York, San Francisco, Seattle, San Diego and Miami. These documents do not contain pictures of Los Angeles--but the Pentagon certainly remembers that in 1992 the authorities of the U.S. lost control of Los Angeles, the second largest city in the country, during a mass rebellion over the police brutalization of Rodney King.

Police forces across the U.S. already widely use military weapons, military training, and military-style operations--and describe their "missions" in military terms like the "war on drugs" and "the war on gangs." At the same time, the U.S. military itself is being used for "domestic" operations in ways not seen since the last wars with Native Peoples in the 1890s--in particular, the U.S. military has been given an unprecedented "domestic police role" on the U.S./Mexico border. Last month, President Clinton recommended putting the military command in charge during domestic "terrorism" emergencies.

In their book Non-Lethal Weapons: A Fatal Attraction?, Nick Lewis and Steven Schofield report that the Clinton administration has an approach to technology and industry that assumes "dual use" for both military and police. According to Lewis and Schofield, a 1994 memorandum of understanding between the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice "led to a programme of research run by DARPA [Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency] on technologies that could provide non-lethal applications for the DoD's Operations Other Than War and for the Department of Justice's civil security requirements, such as riot control, or the breaking of sieges."

The War for Public Opinion

"We've got to recondition our populace again, so that a soldier practicing for a war...is seen as a regular and necessary thing."