Clever little nudge included for any in the intended audience who might be sympathetic to far right arguments on border maintenance: Reported incidents of unregulated militias stealing National Guard equipment during deployments.

Twitter thread on topic by Greg Sargent of WaPo with several good news links and excerpts

1) An important point is getting lost in all the discussion of Trump’s decision to send troops to the border to “protect us” from the migrant caravan. And we need to recapture it. A thread follows.

2) This decision needs to be understood as official misconduct of the very highest order. It isn't merely Trump using the military to “play politics,” which frames the issue too euphemistically....

oh, and on that b.s. Trump hyperbole the other day about throwing rocks, I've seen a lot of comments on twitter from military basically saying that he basically lost respect and even command of the troops by saying that. Like this one:

So in order to scare a few immigrants, the idiot leader now has military forces that will question his orders in all situations, whether serious or not, unless they are thoroughly vetted by Mattis, I guess. Says to me: while the demagogue skills are there, the authoritarian leadership skills are not. 

Joint Chiefs chair: Troops at border will not 'come in contact with immigrants'

By Brett Samuels @ TheHill.com - 11/05/18 08:28 PM EST

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Monday that U.S. military personnel will not interact with immigrants approaching the U.S. border after President Trump deployed thousands of troops to prepare for the caravan.

"There is no plan for U.S. military forces to be involved in the actual mission of denying people entry to the United States," Gen. Joseph Dunford said, according to ABC News.

"There is no plan for the soldiers to come in with immigrants or to reinforce the Department of Homeland Security as they are conducting their mission," he continued. "We are providing enabling capability."

Military personnel will instead focusing on assisting Border Patrol staff to fill in gaps in physical barriers along the border, ABC reported.

Troops assisted in laying barbed wire along the border over the weekend [....]

Why were active-duty forces picked over Guard to defend the border? Capabilities, Pentagon says

By: Tara Copp  @ Military Times, 7 hours ago

The Pentagon faced questions Monday as to why it selected thousands of active-duty forces to deploy to the border instead of sending additional National Guard.

In responses to reporters, Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Rob Manning said when the Department of Homeland Security made the request for military support, it specifically sought forces to assist with planning; engineering support to construct barriers; aviation support to transport Customs and Border Patrol personnel; medical teams; command and control capabilities and the ability to construct temporary housing for Customs and Border Patrol personnel.

Those are active-duty capabilities; but they are also the purview of the National Guard. Approximately 4,800 troops have been deployed with 5,200 expected to be in place by the end of the day.

Of those 4,800, 2,600 are in Texas and 1,100 each are in Arizona and California. Between 750 to 1,000 of those forces are Marines from Camp Pendleton. Several Pendleton units are being combined to form an engineering Marine Air Ground Task Force that will stay in California, a DoD official said on the condition of anonymity.

Manning initially said the administration specified the use of active-duty forces, but the press office quickly clarified that DHS had only requested the capabilities, and DoD made the decision to use Title 10 forces over the Guard.

“We determined that the units that were selected to fulfill this mission were the right units with the right capabilities that we could rapidly deploy in position in order to assist DHS,” Manning said.

If National Guard forces had been selected, state governors would have had to approve [.....]