The U.S. Military's appetite has grown completely out of control. In the name of “national security” it appears that the Department of Defense can order up its annual buffet without any need to explain or justify its feasting. With a budget of $400 billion, it far surpasses any other agency of government. Congress complains about the failure of the Defense Department to submit required accountability reports, but they are afraid to put the DOD on a diet; afraid of appearing to be “weak on defense.” The waste and abuse of the “welfare state” pales in comparison with that of the “warfare state.” According to the Inspector General the Defense Department cannot account for $1 trillion in transactions. And now, like a glutton on the prowl, the Army is drooling over the private property of American citizens.Who’d have ever thought that the excessive appetite of the U.S. Army would become a menacing threat to conservative, patriotic ranchers eking out a life on the short-grass prairies of southeastern Colorado? But that’s exactly what is happening. It’s all part of a transformation of the Army which officials at Fort Carson in Colorado Springs claim requires more training land; a lot more. Army documents indicate that they want as much 2.5 million acres, the entire southeast corner of Colorado. The plan is to expand the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site, already a huge 240,000 acre, live-fire training range, to unheard of dimensions, extending it all the way to the Kansas and Oklahoma borders. The region is attractive to the Army because it simulates some of the terrain in Afghanistan and Iraq. The problem is that this land is already occupied. Nearly 2000 ranches are located on knolls rising above the plains and hidden at the heads of the dramatic red-rock canyons that cut deep into the prairie landscape. These cattle operations are the bedrock of the economy for the little communities in this part of Colorado and they are the homes of ranching families who have lived on the land for generations, many since their ancestors homesteaded in the 1800s. For the most part these are the kind of people who instinctively obey the law, support the troops and try to do their bit to keep America strong by working hard on the land. They normally cause no more trouble than might get stirred up at a local rodeo or country-western dance. But now they are looking around the barn for a pitchfork or picket sign; anything that might be used to defend their land and livelihood against the behemoth that threatens to devour them. The Army says it needs a huge maneuver site because the warfare has changed. In the past, heavy armored, fighting machines rumbled across the prairies of Pinon Canyon, gouging broad ribbons of tracked prints across the ground. The Army sees the wars of the future will be small skirmishes across non-contiguous battlefields. It wants to train its new, high-tech soldiers to be able to reconfigure and move quickly across distances. They claim they need the ranchers' land for the sake of national security. They appeal to landowners to make a sacrifice; their land, their homes for the sake protecting America; equipping soldiers to find, fight and kill the enemies of America, wherever they might be in the world, before we have to fight them here in America, perhaps on the plains of southeastern Colorado. But the ranchers aren’t buying it. They are asking, “What about Fort Bliss and White Sands? What about Fort Irwin? What about all of that federally owned desert land in Nevada and Utah? What about the 25 million acres of land that the military already has? Why does the Army need more land; why does it need our land and our homes?” The Army says that it wants to work only with willing sellers in acquiring property to create what would be the largest training range in the world. But ranchers find little comfort in this promise. In the 1980s when the current Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site was established, about half of the land was seized through condemnation. Ranchers are fearful that the Army will again use the power of eminent domain once the willing-seller cream is skimmed off. As Sparky Turner, who was a legislative aid to Senator Hank Brown when earlier Army promises were made, said, “We were fooled once; we are not going to be fooled twice.” Back in 1983 the unwilling sellers found themselves pretty much on their own, battling to hang on to their homes. They wrote their letters and attended meetings for the procedurally required Environmental Impact Statement. But in the end they were just a handful of ranchers, forced to move off of their land by the power of the United States Army. This time things may be different. This time the Army is dealing not just with a handful of ranchers, but with a coalition of property-rights activists, conservationists, historians and peace advocates. On top of that local elected officials are not falling for the old promises that hushed them in the 80s: promises that the Army would do business with local contractors and that lost tax revenue would be made up for through payment in lieu of taxes, (PILT). Even before the Army has secured funding from Congress, a motley rebellion is amassing to resist the unquenchable appetite of the U.S. military.