Something's really gone wrong with our armed forces ...

Anyone remember the recent "Operation Vigilant Guard" exercises in Chicago? That's when the Illinois national guard trained for urban warfare in case of a national emergency. There's been a lot of exercises like that lately, to my recollection -- Portland and Toledo come to mind. It turns out, though, that in Chicago, we actually had foreign troops observing those exercises.

Polish Troops Train To Take On American “Terrorists”

WTF??? It hasn't escaped my memory that very recently (just before the volcano in Iceland screwed up all flights in Europe this past spring, remember?) pretty much half the government of Poland (including its president) were killed in a plane crash. So we're not dealing with the most stable, democratically elected country, here.

And what's going on with the Coast Guard? I actually used to be in the Coast Guard, when it was under the Department of Transportation and not the Department of Homeland Security. I'm pretty sure it's not amongst the Coast Guard's duties to be a foreign oil company's private security and public relations arm. Yet here are the kinds of stories I'm hearing about:

Journalists Covering BP Spill Now Face Felonies, $40K Fines
"Journalists who come too close to oil spill clean-up efforts without permission could find themselves facing a $40,000 fine and even one to five years in prison under a new rule instituted by the Coast Guard late last week."
and:
US Coast Guard Reserve Petty Officer in-charge of PR also works for BP PR agency

and if reporters want to cover the BP oil spill, they have to somehow become "embedded" with the Coast Guard.

What the hell???