Army tries to say we're 'imagining things'

At the House Subcommittee hearing (February 24, 2009) the Army made reference to the “rumor mill” in Colorado stating that the ideas that people hold there are scenarios that they have created in their own minds. A quote from Mr. Eastin's testimony, “It was rumored that we were coming out there and before long they had us acquiring, the opposition people and the locals had us acquiring 7 million acres, which would have effectively taken southeast Colorado clear over to the Oklahoma border.”

We refute the suggestion we 'imagine things' and an Army document titled, Analysis of Alternatives, May 6th, 2004 supports our positions. And in their own words .........

In the opening paragraph of this document is the following statement, “The Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site (PCMS) Revision to Section 7 for Fort Carson’s Range and Training Land Program (RTLP) Development Plan, September 2003, identified the multi-phased acquisition of 6.9 million acres of land, currently owned by private land owners and the U.S. Forest Service (Comanche National Grasslands), as an option to the use of this land for large-scale, doctrinally sound Joint and Combined military training for units stationed at or deployed to Fort Carson and PCMS.”

Page 12 of this document includes a map showing 8 phases of Pinon Canyon expansion acquisition extending to the New Mexico, Oklahoma and Kansas borders. In light of the existence of this document and a half dozen or so other official Army documents which speak of a very large Pinon Canyon expansion, how can the Army still try to assert that such concerns of citizens in southeast Colorado are the product of a rumor mill, or are these concerns based in the reality of the Army’s own documents?