Saturday, May 1, 2010

SWAT Teams for BP Oil Spill??

That's what Obama announced and no one blinked an eye, at least in the MSM (mainstream media). The alleged purpose is to inspect platforms and rigs.

Here's what SWAT is about, from Wikipedia.org:

"A SWAT (special weapons and tactics)[1][2] team is an elite paramilitary tactical unit in American and some international law enforcement departments. They are trained to perform high-risk operations that fall outside of the abilities of regular officers. Their duties include performing hostage rescues and counter-terrorism operations, serving high risk arrest and search warrants, subduing barricaded suspects, and engaging heavily-armed criminals. A SWAT team is often equipped with specialized firearms including assault rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, carbines, riot control agents, stun grenades, and high-powered rifles for snipers. They have specialized equipment including heavy body armor, entry tools, armored vehicles, advanced night vision optics, and motion detectors for covertly determining the positions of hostages or hostage takers inside of an enclosed structure."

Tongues are wagging in the blogsphere. Many are sarcastically wondering if those oil rigs have been taken over by the Tea Party grandmas in Quincy, Illinois as they smile and sing "God Bless America".

Conspiracy theorists abound; one of them is Mark Levin, a neoconservative talk radio host and former Reagan cabinet advisor, who tells us Obama's SWAT team response to oil spill is government takeover plot of the oil industry.

Maybe SWAT stands for totally different words. But what most people think of when they hear the word SWAT is the paramilitary special operation force as defined in Wiki.

Or maybe singing Tea Party grandmas did take over and blew up the rig...

2 comments:

Joe Steel said...

As it's used here, it seems more a metaphor than what we usually conceive as a SWAT team. Maybe they're just specially trained and equipped roustabouts.

arevamirpal::laprimavera said...

It'd better be a metaphor. If not, I don't like the implication (that it was indeed an act of terrorism).

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