McCain, NRA, and the Secret Service

There are some people who think that McCain could have “called off” the Secret Service and allowed carry into the Celebration of American Values forum.

Allow me (via Heartless Libertarian) to demonstrate exactly why these people are wrong. President Bush will be visiting Fort Bragg to attend an event of the 82nd Airborne, one of the most decorated and honored units in the history of our military, and here is a list of the Secret Service restrictions for our own soldiers:

4. REVIEW—
1. No bolts in the weapons. They can not come to the review,
must stay at unit area.
2. Take out the Springs to all Magazines. These will be
checked. To include 9MM
3. Operating Rods taken out of the 240 and 249’s
4. Staging area has changed. I will send out New diagram and
also talk with the BDE CSM’s this morning.
5. Ensure Your personnel don’t have any Knives, Dog Tags,
Watches, Cell Phones Leatherman of any type, nothing in their pockets,
No keys, Lazer type pointers And No Liquids except for the Canteen.
Anything found on the soldiers will be taken away and not returned. If
a weapon of any type is found on the person then they will be set to the
side and Secret service will deal with.
6. ALL First Sergeants, SGM’s And CSM’s will help with the
inspection of all soldiers as they move thru the Medal Detector area.
Will explain at the rehearsal.
7. Once a Trooper is in the Steral(sic) Area he or she can not leave
that area.
8. Do not attach the Bayonet to the FLC until after the
inspection. Will explain at Rehearsal

Now, if the Secret Service is going to do that to our own military when the sitting President visits, do you really believe that McCain, a mere candidate, could have called them off a room full of civilians? Come on, it’s patently ridiculous, and you know it.

17 Comments

  1. And this dude’s only RUNNING for president. They must get really serious when the top dog shows up.

  2. As a former member of the 18th Airborne, I find this treatment both disgraceful and disgusting. These men and women are the protectors of the Constitution and should be honored, not treated like criminals by the SS thugs. For the record, I don’t blame McCain, because he has little control or say over the SS operations.

  3. Yeah, I know it sounds bad, but please remember the job of the Secret Service, purely and simply, is to protect their subject AT ALL COSTS. And yes, that does include stepping in between him and the shooter and taking that bullet. We award Medals of Honor to soldiers who do what these people are expected to do. Maybe we should cut them a little slack and let them do their job.

  4. Caleb;

    I wouldn’t expect it could happen. But this is the American Republic, not the Roman Empire, and the PEOPLE are supposed to choose the Emperor — er, the President — not the Praetorian Guard. It is shameful that a citizen campaigning for President cannot be trusted among his fellow citizens. This is why I felt it would have been entirely appropriate for citizen McCain to speak to an empty hall. No free men allowed? Fine. No free men attend.

    M

  5. Maybe McCain couldn’t control the SS, but he could have had the decency to apologize for their actions.
    I mean, he is trying to court our vote, isn’t he?

  6. The description of the security precautions for Bush at Ft Bragg sound more like those required for Hitler! I bet Churchill didn’t have any problem meeting troops with live rounds in their weapons. I think this speaks volumes about the new relationship between the American people and their masters.

  7. i was in the boy scouts when the first Bush visited Epcot… they even made us remove our metal belt buckles when we walked into the secured area… and this was the freakin boy scouts!!!

  8. have you ever heard of a coup d’état – taking out the commander in chief is a good way to start. Special protections are in order for what is a PR appearance

  9. I remember back when I was still in the Army Guard, a president (forget which one) came to the city our armory was in. We thought we’d get a good view of his arrival by standing on the roof of the armory.

    No way- people in cammies on a roof is a bad thing according to the SS. It irked me just a bit.

    I won’t go into the story about the day Clinton came to visit. It’s funny, but I can’t keep posting it because I need my name removed from the list and bringing it up all of the time keeps it an on-going problem. 🙂

  10. Here is why the Secret Service does what it does: Abraham Lincoln, James A. Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy.

    No one expected a U.S. Soldier to start lobbing grenades at his troops, but it happened just a couple or few years ago at most.

    Anwar Sadat, October 6, 1981 – no one expected soldiers of his own military to assassinate him.

    This is not a disgrace, but this could be the Secret Service doing the job it is supposed to do, that is if the list is genuine.

    Why wonder if authentic, well look at it, read it, check a dictionary. It looks like it was written by a 12 year old. Also ask yourself, who would be stupid enough to jeopardize their own career, and risk time in jail, for releasing such. Documents of that nature are classified at the very least. I very strongly tend to doubt, based upon my own work experience, stuff like that would be released for public awareness by the Secret Service. Of course, maybe a U.S. Soldier released it to us – imagine that! Think about that, because if that is the case it means a U.S. Soldier has violated protocol, has violated security, has probably violated his orders, has potentially endangered the life of the Commander in Chief by divulging security measures, yet some of you are upset about the ‘alleged’ procedures in that list and seem to imply that some sort of paranoi is present. The Secret Service is doing their job, and taking few chances that they will do it well. If they did not take precautions like this, then the president was assassinated, my guess is that many of the same of you who condemn them for such precautions would then slam the Secret Service for not properly protecting the president.

    All the best,
    Glenn B

  11. No, I pretty much think that it’s standard ops for the Secret Service – my purpose in pointing this out was to demonstrate that if the Service takes these precautions for our own troops, that it’s completely unreasonable to have expected them to allow concealed carry during Sen. McCain’s speech at NRA.

  12. Oh, by the way, do you think when Bush visited the troops in Iraq, that all those on the military installations he visited were weaponless, or were forced to unload. To mention Churchill and then Hitler, in the context in which they were brought up, was ludicrous at the least.

  13. Remarkable. I was previously unaware that there were a significant (non-zero) number of politicians having been assaulted by dogtags and/or wrist watches.

  14. Actually, I believe that he could have “called off” the Secret Service. The issue is that his options would have been either no security, or let the Secret Service do it their way. McCain would have to be a freaking idiot to take option A.

  15. For someone to compare the soldiers of the US army to those of the Egyptian army is what’s ludicrous.

  16. Glen, That kind of information is not classified. It would not be of any use to classify it bucause the vast majority of soldiers do not have clearances. Furthermore, that is the first time I have ever heard of those kind of precautions used for Bush. Now under Clinton, the troops were not even allowed to carry weapons functional or not.
    Also I would point out that that message doesn’t even follow basic Army memo standards. There is no way any competant operations NCO would let that get released to the troops.

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