Trump Threatens To Triple Border Troops To 15,000

CNN reports:



President Donald Trump has ordered more military personnel to the US southwest than he has serving in some of the world’s most contentious combat zones. Senior military officers have defended the deployment on national security grounds, but the mission — dubbed Operation Faithful Patriot — raises a slew of questions, with former officials from both Republican and Democratic administrations and some veterans condemning it as a political stunt by a President eager to fire up his political base just days away from the midterm elections.

“A military strained by 17 years of war and sequestration doesn’t need this,” tweeted David Lapan, a former Homeland Security spokesman for the Trump administration and a former Marine. “Service members who have repeatedly spent long periods of time away from home don’t need this. And the US doesn’t need its military to ‘defend’ against a group of unarmed migrants, inc. many women & kids.” Former officials and veterans point to the unknown cost to taxpayers, given that much smaller deployments of National Guard to the border have cost hundreds of millions of dollars.