Stockton SWAT Raid: Where Have We Seen This Before?

by William Grigg
Oct. 25, 2011

It was 7:00 a.m. when the SWAT team materialized on the steps of Joann Rice's Stockton, California home. The raiding party, which was from neighboring San Jose, was pursuing Steve Ruiz, a member of the Hell's Angels suspected of fatally shooting a fellow gang member. Acting on what they insisted was valid intelligence, the strike force -- 30 combat-equipped operators backed up by armored vehicles -- didn't bother to get a search warrant.

When Rice's adult daughter answered the door, the officers repeatedly demanded to know if her life was in danger. According to her mother's account, the young woman calmly explained that there was nothing wrong, that she and her children were all right, and that the police were free to inspect the home to see if Ruiz was there.

Instead of acting on that invitation, the police seized the young lady, detained her in a vehicle for four hours, and then took her to jail. They then unloaded several rounds of tear gas into the house, leaving it with shattered windows, perforated walls, and a dense, suffocating chemical mist. The residue of the tear gas attack is now infused into the carpets and the furniture. After failing to find the fugitive following a siege that lasted several hours, the police eventually lost interest in the home and drove off without offering to help -- or providing so much as an apology.

"We want it fixed," Rice told the local CBS affiliate. "Of course I'm calling my insurance, but San Jose has to pay for this, there is no reason why they shouldn't."

Actually, there is a reason -- albeit not one reasonable people would find persuasive: Because they were State-licensed purveyors of violence, the armed goons who laid waste to Joann Rice's home aren't vandals, but rather "heroes in error." That's the expression used by Ahmed Chalabi, the con-man and CIA-cultivated crook whose "Iraqi National Congress" peddled much of the disinformation used to justify the 2003 invasion of that country.

The marauders who laid waste to Rice's home acted on bad intelligence, refused to accept the findings of a voluntary inspection, invaded the home on a humanitarian pretext, trashed the place, terrorized those who lived therein, and then shrugged and walked away. The same treatment, on a much larger scale and with a huge attendant loss of life, was inflicted on Iraq -- and even now, the Regime responsible for that atrocity is refusing to leave that country alone.

While many Americans will be outraged over the treatment inflicted on Joanne Rice, relatively few will understand that it is a microcosm of what the U.S. government did to the innocent people of Iraq. On the other hand, given the extent to which Americans have been programmed to worship the armed emissaries of the divine State, it's possible that a few -- including Michelle Bachman or Dana Rohrabacher, perhaps -- will rebuke Rice for her lack of gratitude, and explain to her that she should pay at least part of the expenses for rebuilding her home after its "liberation."