Just this afternoon, the count of troops deployed in Washington, DC was 20,000. Now that number has officially been increased to 21,000, with as many as 26,000 requested.
- On Tuesday January 4th, it was “National Guard will have 300 troops in DC, but they will be unarmed, and there only for traffic control.”
- By Wednesday evening on January 6th, it was “6200 troops, armed only with riot control gear will be in DC until the inauguration.”
- Thursday, that evolved into “a fence around the Capitol, and the deployment will be for at least a month.”
- On Friday, it was “The troops might be armed.”
- Then on Saturday, it became “National Guard Troops Deploying to DC Will Come With Lethal Weapons”
- Monday the 11th, and the troop count was up to 15,000
- Tuesday the 12th saw the addition of a Stryker Brigade, complete with M2 heavy machine guns
- This morning, the addition of concertina wire and concrete barricades.
- By this afternoon, troop strength was increased to 21-26,000.
- This force is larger than an infantry division reinforced with a Stryker brigade. For comparison, there are only 3,000 troops in Iraq, and another 2,500 in Afghanistan.
On top of this, we know that troops have been mobilized in nearly every state of the nation. There are 442,000 total members of the National Guard. In just ten days, nearly one in ten of them have been activated. This is in addition to the ten thousand or so police from across the country who are in DC. It seems like the number of troops increases by the hour.
It is hard to keep track of when things are so fluid.