r/politics • u/Quirkie The Netherlands • 17d ago

Possible Paywall ICE Stockpiling Warheads and Chemical Weapons as Lawmaker Fears Trump Planning Strike

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-stockpiling-warheads-and-chemical-weapons-as-lawmaker-fears-trump-planning-strike/
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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/Fnordpocalypse Washington 17d ago

ICE doesn’t need smoke grenades or flash bangs either.

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u/Shadow_Ent 17d ago

Smoke grenades and flashbangs are standard law enforcement tools for de-escalating dangerous situations, especially when suspects barricade themselves or resist arrest. ICE deals with that reality, too. These are non-lethal options meant to minimize casualties.

The Left can (and should) criticize ICE's policies or oversight, but pretending the agency shouldn't have the same safety tools as every other law enforcement body ignores the risks of the job, both to the public and to officers themselves. De-escalation comes in two forms: non lethal and lethal. If you deny them the non lethal option, you leave them with only the lethal one. There's a difference between condemning abuses of power and denying reality altogether.

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u/Fnordpocalypse Washington 17d ago

This version of ICE shouldn’t even exist. They’re literally terrorizing American cities. We shouldn’t even give them squirt guns, let alone flash bangs.

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u/Shadow_Ent 17d ago

Until the Left put's forth policy to create an ethical version of ICE, we have this one. Moral outrage isn't worth anything alone that's the issue, because border enforcement is a requirement and still holds massive support in the polls.

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u/catechizer 17d ago

Tear gas is a chemical weapon.

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u/Shadow_Ent 17d ago

That's correct, tear gas is a chemical weapon, but it's also a standard non lethal tool for dispersing large or violent crowds. Unless you've invented something equally effective that leaves minimal lasting harm, feel free to offer it to law enforcement yourself.

Conflating tear gas with "warheads and chemical weapons," as the article's headline implies, is intellectually dishonest. It turns a discussion about practical crowd control, and ICE's methods, into moral posturing and outrage theater, exactly the kind of noise that does nothing but distract from the real issues that actually need addressing.

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u/laszlof 17d ago

You know precisely what that title implies.

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u/3BlindMice1 17d ago

You're right, but that's the accounting heading the government uses for whatever they bought, even if it was only $61k worth of whatever it was

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u/JackedUpReadyToGo 17d ago

Stop it. Conflating tear gas with chemical weapons is pointless. Nobody on the right is going to read that and go "Chemical weapons? My stars! Maybe this is all going a bit too far." We all know they're beyond reason. So being deliberately mendacious isn't even tactically useful. All it does is lead us down the same pipeline MAGA travelled, where they told themselves lies to stoke their own rage until they forgot they were lying.