Folks being upset at the US military establishment is nothing new. Sometimes the angst is well deserved. I'm not naïve enough to believe that the powers that be are all good guys simply looking out for our best interest. I'm not paranoid enough to believe that everything happening in our country is a giant conspiracy theory either.
I guess that leaves me in a state of perpetual agnosticism when it comes to following the news cycle. The MSM has consistently demonstrated that it is the official propaganda branch of national socialism going back to the Clinton administration. After nearly a quarter of a century of sectarian "consensus building" and "advancing the narrative" I can't accept anything they say at face value.
I can't whole heartedly side with the so called "conspiracy" crowd either. These guys have been pestering me at gun shows since the 70's. Mostly they are harmless, a little nutty and not overly concerned with personal hygiene. That doesn't make them wrong. It just makes me less likely to pay them much mind.
I freely admit that I can't be bothered to take the time to learn something about what's going on with Jade Helm 15. I already know that that its supposed to be a secret military training exercise for special forces operators. They probably don't have a tell all Facebook page with everything I could possibly want to know on it.
So what do we know about Jade Helm 15?
- Folks who are big into conspiracies as a hobby are saying there is a conspiracy
- That doesn't make them wrong
- Maybe the fluoride in the water is decreasing their credibility
- The MSM is in favor of Jade Helm
- Since when is the MSM a fan of military exercises that don't involve sensitivity training, pink camo and KY-jelly?
- They are spending time and effort mocking people that most everyone else simply ignores
- We have an openly anti-American administration running the show in DC
- Nothing, not one policy, not one directive, not one executive order, has advanced the interests of the American people since 2008.
- The administration has consistently weakened the abilities or overextended the capacity of the American military
- There is no reason for a spec ops training program to be a national news story. The fact that it is would normally be considered a failure
Then one day at o'dark thirty the exercises were for real. The Panamanians guarding Noriega's plane informed the S.E.A.L. team trying to secure it that they could not conduct their "training" exercises in that location. Noriega's men managed to put up a defense before being beaten. The rest of Panama fell with little or no resistance.
Is the Jade Helm story the first indication of something brewing in the American west, or simply the result of a slow news cycle? I'm enthusiastically agnostic either way.
Every time there's a big exercise on U.S. soil, the CT nuts come out of the woodwork. Last time, it was kidnapping students from local Denver schools and taking them to the Broncos stadium for brainwashing.
ReplyDeleteBack in Michigan in the early 80's, it was the "UN troops and helicoptors are being staged at Camp Grayling" meme, ready to invoke Martial Law and take over the country. I delivered groceries to Camp Grayling, and never saw any foreign troops there. Coincidentally, there were claims of UN helicoptor fly-bys, but never any pictures or video. Suffice it to say, there was also no Martial Law imposed then, either.
Now it's "Jade Helm is going to take over Texas using secret tunnels under WalMarts and impose Martial Law". Half-way into the exercise, and it still hasn't happened.
Too many cries of "Wolf!" that haven't materialised in the past for me to believe those boys any more, now or in the future. And now I have to add Chuck Norris to that list.
Funny thing is how many of those same people want troops brought back home to U.S. soil from overseas bases, but don't want them training here.
There is some good morel hunting to be had around camp Grayling. I have no doubt that the UN forces were there to harvest them for the French.
DeleteThat said I have seen UN APC's on flatbeds being hauled up and down I-75 and I-23. That was in the late 80's and early 90's. The Michigan militia got a lot of recruitment mileage out of those small (I never saw more than a dozen UN vehicles at a time) convoys.
I guess it never occurred to anyone that cross functional training might include training with the troops and equipment of other nations. American manufactures of military hardware might need to test that equipment prior to shipping it to their customer. Build the equipment downriver. Truck it up to camp Grayling. Fly in the buyers to evaluate and test.
OR
Take over SE Michigan because what the global elite really and I mean really want to do is have absolute control over Detroit. After all that's how the Germans were able to shut down Stroh's.
It's all a conspiracy man.
Res Ipsa: "That said I have seen UN APC's on flatbeds being hauled up and down I-75 and I-23."
DeleteWere they on their way from manufacturing plants to shipping ports, perhaps?
There have been Canadian forces training at Camp Grayling, but AFAIK, it was not under the auspices of the UN...NORAD, maybe, but we have plenty of Canadian troops right here for the same reason. I used to work with some of them, in fact.
What bugs me the most is the repeated warnings of Martial Law being declared in association with these exercises, over and over again, yet it never happens. And it won't during Obama's remaining tenure either -- I'll wager real money on that.
I don't know. I ran up and down I 75 at least once a month for most of 1990 to 94 and some times more than that 95 and 96. I saw a few (I don't remember how many) convoys in that time. It was always in the day time and there were no tarps over the equipment being moved. So, its not like it was any kind of secret.
DeleteAssuming they had as many as a couple of hundred of UN marked vehicles, so what? That all could be explained as training and/or development equipment. I can't imagine trying to take over any part of the State of Michigan with a few hundred trucks/apc's etc.
When they put down the 67 riots in Detroit they had more gear on the ground than what was at camp grayling. A handful of APC's and support equipment is nothing compared to the tanks they rolled down Woodward and those were all American.
If we ever have martial law it won't matter what is painted on the outside of the equipment or who is driving it.
FWIW,
DeleteIf they were shipping equip out I think it would have been from the Port of Toledo or by rail to New Jersey.
I was trying to remember back to what I saw on those trips. Keep in mind it was a long time ago. I think the biggest convey was maybe a half dozen semis with equip. Thinking back I'm pretty sure I saw more NATO than UN designators. It was a long time ago and didn't seem overly important at the time.
During the spring/summer of 96 I had other conspiracy theory concerns that were more pressing than if the UN had a couple of trucks and APC's in Grayling.
Another possibility is that those were US vehicles painted in UN colors for use by US forces in UN peacekeeping missions. Just as the troops were made to wear UN uniform elements/colors, so did their equipment.
DeleteRes Ipsa: "Take over SE Michigan because what the global elite really and I mean really want to do is have absolute control over Detroit."
DeleteHell, all they have to do is pay the back taxes on all the deserted buildings and they can have have the city free and clear as it is.
"...have half the city...
DeleteSomething else to consider, Res...ever notice that all of these claims of the UN/Martial Law only ever come with a Democrat in the White House? The Camp Grayling stuff I mentioned was at the tail end of the Carter presidency. The nineties claims were during Clinton's administration, and the current ones are Because Obama.
DeleteFunny how all those APCs and helicopters and tanks and everything else all seem to disappear during a Republican presidency...ain't it?
In this kind of instance, given who the president is right now, I honestly can't discount a lot of theories like I would have normally would pre Obama. His love of a civilian army, his talk of how he would love a third term, and how he has continuously stirred the race pot since he got elected all contribute to people getting crazy notions.
ReplyDeleteIn case it isn't clear, no I am not a CT kind of person. The only tin foil I use is in cooking and baking, not as a hat.
DeleteIIRC, Jade Helm may have stopped a terrorist plot from happening a couple weeks ago.
who the president is right now,
DeleteThat's the problem with dishonest men. It's easy to believe that they are involved in even more diabolical plots than the ones you know about, because its in their character to be unscrupulous.
That is true, but we have verifiable evidence that Obama lets some of these kerfuffles go on for sometimes several days before they die down because he is doing something illegal and underhanded behind the scenes while our attention is elsewhere. It is just that he has been such a failure for the most part with his schemes, they are easy to detect. So we are now a very cynical nation. Hence the love and support for the honesty of Donald Trump.
DeleteLike somebody wrote a letter to the local paper in Colorado of his suspicions that the EPA were going to manufacture some kind of incident to gain control of that mine area and make it a Super Fund site. Less than a week later, a disaster happens that is worse than the BP spill ever was. And the EPA caused it.
Think how much wildlife, waterlife and agriculture has been destroyed just so Obama's EPA could take control of an area and dive into that superfund money.
Susan: "Think how much wildlife, waterlife and agriculture has been destroyed just so Obama's EPA could take control of an area and dive into that superfund money. "
DeleteUnfortunately, the problem isn't quite that simple. This has been building up for many, many years, with two mine owners pointing their fingers at each other over whose fault it was so that neither one would have to pay for the cleanup. In the meantime, none of the mine owners in the area or the local authorities wanted to sign up for Superfund designation to address it because of the impact it would have had on future mining and on tourism (the current owner of the Gold King mine wants to sell it, which would be impossible if it was a Superfund site).
So, where it could have all been addresed long ago, greed on the part of numerous parties kept kicking the can down the road. It's always about the money, but not always in the way you think.
Also, the "prediction" described in the letter to the editor is the exact opposite of what actually happened.
I don't get the hub-bub about Jade Helm, or any of these other training exercises. Let's just think through it: The military has to train in large urban exercises. There are significant challenges doing large urban exercises that don't arise in smaller exercises (commo problems due to interference from urban sources, false radar reflections off large buildings, all the IR pollution, no lanes for big weapons, no ingress/egress paths, very slow backup deployment, loads of places for counter-surveillance, loads of places for enemy forces to stack up, etc etc etc etc).
ReplyDeleteSo. With all these challenges for actual operations, it's obvious that large-scale urban training is necessary. Where should we train? The options are;
1) Build cities for training use. Problems; no civilian population using cell phones, microwaves, TV's, etc, so all the background is not there. The buildings need to be cement and steel to get the same reflections, there needs to be loads of cars to mimic the thermals, so it's gonna cost a trillion bucks.
2) Train overseas. Problems; everybody and their brother will be standing around with every recording device ever made to pick up signals intel, movement patterns, response times, and tactics. And it's super expensive to move everything overseas for a few months at a time. We'd be interfacing with local authorities, so we'd have to outfit them with radios, cell phones, etc that work with our stuff just for coordination - mo money, mo money, mo money.
3) Train here in the US. Problems; some local nuts will think you're going to take over (yeah, where every third house has three shotguns, two rifles, and a determined husband).
Training in US cities has huge advantages; it gets the military working with local cops, so when the military are back to being National Guardsmen and a hurricane hits everybody knows how all the commo gear works. It keeps all the travel money here in the states. It's, BY FAR, the cheapest option. It's, BY FAR, the best op-sec option, and the best info-sec option.
Bill: "Training in US cities has huge advantages; it gets the military working with local cops, so when the military are back to being National Guardsmen and a hurricane hits everybody knows how all the commo gear works. It keeps all the travel money here in the states. It's, BY FAR, the cheapest option. It's, BY FAR, the best op-sec option, and the best info-sec option."
DeleteAgree wholeheartedly with all your points, Bill. But it's
Posse Comitatus rearing its head; everyone's paranoid that the military is really training to fight against US citizens. But as I've continually noted, it's never happened as an outcome of any of these exercises...and it never will.
But that won't stop all the paranoia. Because Obama.
But that won't stop all the paranoia. Because Obama.
ReplyDeleteI'm actually pretty sympathetic to that perspective. But even he wouldn't use the military to take over by force (I mean, why would he? He got Obamacare passed without using the military).
I've never understood the "paranoid militia" attitude. It's highly counterproductive. If you want freedom, then work to ensure elections are fair, get involved in your community, do all that Good Citizen stuff. And, who do these folks think make up the military?
Bill: "But even he wouldn't use the military to take over by force..."
ReplyDeleteMore to the point, he couldn't use the military that way without the approval of Congress...which wouldn't happen, since the Republicans control the House.
That's why I'm not sympathetic to that perspective, at all -- it's not based on reason, but on feelings.
I think the greater problem is that Americans don't trust the government. It doesn't seem to matter which faction is in charge either. "It's all Bushes fault" or "Obama is evil", are two sides of the same coin.
ReplyDeleteThe .gov is too large and too unaccountable. When team A is in charge team B blames them for a conspiracy to destroy everything and vise versa. Its the same .gov with a different face, and a different version of reality.