Paranoia Strikes Deep
There’s a story that has been showing up on the web that has some folks in a tizzy.
Operation Jade Helm is to get underway in July. Note: I chose this source to link to because it covers the other sources well enough.
“Seven Southwestern states will soon be infiltrated by 1,200 military special ops personnel as part of a controversial domestic military training in which some of the elite soldiers will operate undetected among civilians.
Operation Jade Helm begins in July and will last for eight weeks. Soldiers will operate in and around towns in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and Colorado where some of them wil drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training.”
First alarm bell is the apparent total lack of OPSEC. I mean even I will be looking over my shoulder and I don’t live in any of the States involved. But then that’s just me anyway.
Those readers who actually live in those states will need to beware. Of what… I ain’t exactly sure. Seems to me that “1200 Special Ops Personnel” might be grabbing lunch or some such while on leave any time of the year.
Maybe it IS part of a plot, as some suggest, but us TRULY paranoid folks doubt it would be publicized???
Category: Geezer Alert!
Isn’t this something like the Snake Eater Robin Sage exercise that has been going on around Bragg for decades?
That a good question… Our RAO office here ran a small article about it because they may do drills here and close Davis Mothballs here and there..
just one more reason for mama to get upset when I’m late coming home
I guess we will find out if they are really shooting blanks….but…if they shoot at someone, they might just reciprocate??
Shades of Southern Comfort (the ’81 movie).
That’s exactly how that Special Forces officer was killed by a deputy sheriff late at night near Fort Bragg, North Carolina during a training exercise.
Just my particular paranoia kicking in:
Could this be the first of several progressive (see what I did there?) steps to get the average low-information citi. .. .er. . . .serf inured to the sight of uniformed and armed soldiers on every street corner and in every house, for when Kongress (of either party) decides to repeal Posse Comitatus and the 3A.
I think “infiltration” suggests no uniforms, don’t it?
One step at a time. . . . . . .
One genuine concern might be the soldiers are going to be issued live ordnance for the purpose of backing up the illegal and unconstitutional Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Safety Administration when they begin forcing motorists to stop on the highways for surveillance, and/or begin setting up checkpoints at supermarkets and shopping malls, as TSA has already publicly stated that they plan on doing.
They already started doing that in Tennessee, and unfortunately, Tennessee authorities willingly COOPERATED in the nefarious crime!
Is a public exercise really a good idea given the current paranoia about ISIS and all? Especially in states with lots of guns within reach. In Arkansas they would be called targets.
Any bets if turd ball Ventura shows up with the Tinfoil hat Brigade for this one?
Bahahahaha ! ! ! !
He’s a little busy suing dead people
Ventura and Alex Jones are already hitting this one with a sledge hammer. Facebook is inundated with stupid posts, and not one person who is panicking is at all affiliating with any uniformed service. One airsofter started trying to quote army field manuals to me.
It is close to April 1. Maybe the press release got out a little early?
Gee, what could possibly go wrong with a plan like this? Seems like we’ve heard some very negative responses when they’ve tried smaller scale practice sessions in places like public schools in the past. This they expect to be better received?
Here in Utah, it all depends on where they plan dropping in, and whether or not they’ll be wearing an easily identifiable uniform, or are in mufti.
Utah has its own Special Forces guys based here, the 19th Special Forces (Airborne) of the Utah National Guard.
In the metropolitan areas along the Wasatch Front, i.e., Salt Lake City, Ogden, American Fork, Orem, Provo, et cetera, there might not be that much reaction from the public, although the local news media could be expected to race to the location.
But, in the mountainous high desert area where I live, i.e., where Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming meet, and elsewhere in rural wilderness areas, the United States Army can expect local folks to be both suspicious and armed.
There are plenty of areas, such as where the polygamists and/or anti-government folks live, where even I have been warned by locals not to casually venture, for trespassers do get shot or blown up with dynamite (i.e., an actual local murder several years ago).
I also enjoy roaming these mountains (or at least, I used to, and hope to get well enough to be able to do it again), armed and wearing all my of obsolete Viet Nam era war gear, and I make certain no one sees me, lest they panic and mistakenly mobilize law enforcement and the National Guard.
Also, this area is WILDERNESS, which means we have mountain lions and grizzly bears.
I wonder what the local Ute and Navaho think about some armed guys, not wearing uniforms, suddenly showing up on their reservations?
Another thing to be considered is what their instructions are when encountering an armed local citizen, and their familiarity with Utah’s laws.
In Utah, ANYONE can be legally armed, so long as the weapon is in plain view.
A license is required for wearing a concealed firearm.
Several years ago, I was driving from Saint Anthony, Idaho to American Fork, Utah, when a Utah Highway Patrolman pulled me over for speeding in Ogden, Utah.
This was years before Utah changed its gun laws, so following the advice of the NRA, I immediately informed the trooper that I was armed.
The guy just about panicked!
He took the revolver to verify it, had the area surrounded with other Highway Patrol cars, and asked if my weapon was registered.
I told him that firearms do not need to be registered in Idaho or Utah, and asked him where he was from?
He had recently transferred to the Utah Highway Patrol from the New York City Police Department, which explained (?) why he was unfamiliar with the most basic gun laws in Utah and Idaho.
Anyway, it got straightened out, and I continued on my way, with my old second-hand Ruger “Security Six” .357 magnum revolver in the holster on my right hip.
I remember another time when, in the wee hours, I stopped for gasoline and goodies at a convenience store in American Fork, Utah.
The clerk wanted to know why I was wearing a gun.
I told him anybody who wants to can wear a gun in Utah, and asked him where he was from?
He was from California, and he didn’t think it was right that anyone who wanted to could walk around armed.
Also, in Utah, its legal to have a loaded pistol in the glove compartment (which Mormons call a “jockey box”) of a vehicle, even without a concealed weapons license.
Oops!
That is supposed to be, “it’s”, a contraction of “it is”, and not, “its”, a possesive pronoun.
I dont care for progressives, its not a matter of them being pro or con anything. Your ok in my book. I think that done done it for now.
The guys with the new cowboy boots, new cowboy hats, and funny accents are the infiltrators. The guys in the chaps are just gay.
Er… Um… Chaps lit yer fuse huh?
Pronounced accurately as “shaps”, short for chapereros — worn while riding through the chaparral.
“This has been a public service announcement. We now return you to your regularly scheduled program now in progress.”
Jeez. Shaps sounds even more gay but, being familiar only with the hosses that carry odds, I will accept your offering. Shaps it is.
Film at eleven…
It’s pronounced ‘shaps’ in Montana, too.
…and they even wear SPURS and carry ROPES and, you know, stuff that REAL COWBOYS need to do their job…
Oh, and if you folks come this way, don’t mention ‘gay’ anything around these gents, if you want to keep your teeth.
Bingo!
They’re infiltrators, right?
They’re all funny-lookin’, like that guy in ‘Fargo’. You betcha. Probably clones of him.
A duality of thought. I understand the need to practice training in order to respond to threats within our own boarders. Maybe using SPECOPS to do it is the best means to go about it. With reports of terrorist cells and training camps within our own borders there most certainly has to be some plan of action.
That being said, I see red flags popping up in the amber waves of grain. During Hurricane Katrina LEO and Military groups were confiscating weapons from private citizens by force. During the exact moment when people needed to protect their lives and property doors were kicked down, people assaulted, and their only means of self defense forcefully taken from them.
The Disaster Recovery Personal Protection Act was passed in the aftermath. Many think this bill stops the government from taking weapons from law abiding citizens during an emergency or disaster. That is true, unless the Federal Government deems it necessary in certain circumstances.
Only through the efforts of the NRA did that law get passed. Many have not had their weapons returned to this date and initially the government denied they had taken any weapons until a stash of over a thousand weapons was discovered.
The use of military forces on US soil is clearly limited. The abuse of authority by government officials is well documented. Conducting operations off of military reservations may be justified in our current time.
Although the entire scope and tactics should probably remain unknown, I am suspect of their planning to ensure our civil liberties are not taken from us during a crisis.
Thoughts from the Village Idiot.
http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/large-scale-gun-confiscation/
and
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, soldiers from the Utah National Guard honorably REFUSED to seize firearms from private citizens.
Yes that is true, a group of them told superiors that they would not comply with such an order. The same group was very vocal about their concerns of “Big Army” being there as well.
These are worthless punks, nazi’s in the same vein as the Germans…these pasty little bastards are on a power trip, they were taught by our communist school system and know absolutely NOTHING about America….when they get serious about this shyt, there are going to be a LOT OF DEAD ONES….us too…but “the Tree of Liberty must at times be watered by the blood of the patriots!!”
YEA BUDDY!!!
I would have got in trouble if I had seen anything like this. We were deputised by the Louisiana AG. They told us we should not confiscaqte weapons, and LA has legal open carry. If we did, we were responsible to record the information, and ensure the weapon was returned to the rightful owner. I met plenty of people with weapons, and did not give a shit. Texas troops that were with me did not confiscate any weapons. I heard OK did.
https://youtu.be/2HRZfvtYlCY?list=PLCFF6A2AF94CF91AE
Just about the time I’m inclined to defend the press to the rest of the TAH crew, along comes a story in the Daily Mail to toss the inclination out the window.
Anybody else notice that there’s no byline on this POS story? And that it’s a lazy-ass rewrite of some gibberish from Info Wars?
What we’ve apparently got is yet another smarmy British wanker getting his rocks off trying to make those of us in the colonies look like buffoons with scary black rifles.
The sad thing is that there’s likely a really interesting story here. Back in my salad days, I would probably have given up the croutons to be embedded with the 82nd and watch the thing play out.
Zero says he selected that particular source b/c it contains the American sources (e.g., Houston Chronicle) that reported the story. That there is an op and where Mr. Bizarro, Alex Jones, went with it are two different things.
Cav, I’m not beating up on Zero for the choice of source. Claymore points out the goofiness on DU every Tuesday.
My main beef is that, once again, some English tosser at the Daily Mail sallies forth with a vapid and vacuous spin to further a smug agenda.
Garryowen
You guys are slackin’
Nice. And my prompt.
Love the song, although I think it is generally considered “the first” VN War protest song. I cant’s help it, I am a big Neil Young fan and Stephen Stills too, to a lesser extent. I think Stills redeemed himself a bit with this one (after he read “Chckenhawk”?). Nothing like busting some FARs at sunset.
There’s a movie called “Return to A” that was made in Kazakhstan. I saw it while traveling on a UAE charter 737-800. It is about a Soviet era soldier who returns to Afghanistan in the modern era. The opening sequence to the movie has the most outstanding footage of rotary flight through the canyons, mountains, ridges, and valleys of Afghanistan. It is outstanding. I highly recommend the movie, just for that opening aerial sequence. I have searched for it on the internet but have yet to find it.
With this administration I can believe.
Me too.
How sad is it, that with president mom-jeans and his clown car posse administration, things have gooten so bad that the majority of the public is willing to believe that this is part of some nefarious plan?
The only thing I want walking around in uniform with a gun is also wearing a badge…and not too damn many of those, either.
I don’t live where this is happening, but SCREW THAT. Neither I, nor ANY OTHER CITIZEN, is your freakin’ practice dummy!
I can see some big, beat up, pickup pulling up alongside these fellows, and a couple good ol’ boys lookin at em and sayin’ “Y’all aint from around here, now are ya.” Not a question. An observation.
I suspect that in these areas, with so many good citizens all armed and well-stocked with ammunition and provisions, that push come to shove, those snake eaters might not fare so well.
I also admit to being just enough paranoid that I am ready to call my congress critters and tell them to take the Army to task and have this whole operation shut down now, before folks start getting shot.
Americans don’t take kindly to having regulars billited amongst them, even as part of a training exercise. Even 240 years later, it’s still a sore subject with the citizenry.
The mess at the Bundy ranch looked to have some kind of Specops people there to me. I watched a lot of it on TV and the internet.
They had the beards, the walk the equipment that, to me at least, looked like they were from a military grade unit. They looked like they knew exactly what they were doing with the guns but stayed away from the livestock from what I could see.
They certainly did NOT look like they were BLM bureaucrats from my experience.
It is a miracle that the whole mess didn’t blow up. I am more inclined to believe that if they were Specops they knew that they may get a few at the outset of shooting but knew that they would be outnumbered as word spread around the area and all kinds of people came out of the woodwork to even the score.
One thing for certain, the government is terrified of all kinds of us folks out here in the hinterlands…
In the words of that old song ‘ain’t that a shame?’
It is what it is. As, we are who we are!
YEA BUDDY!!!
I swear, if those obnoxious conspirators don’t stop accessing my hard drive for ideas when they think I’m asleep, I am going to give them some ballistically bad PR that they will NEVER live down.
I came up with the idea for this last year, only it’s after a bad storm that knocks out the power in 6 counties, and once the power is back on, some creepy dude in black armor, wearing a helmet with a microphone that looks like snot under hise nose, shows up on my front steps and tells me I have to evacuate my house AFTER the storm has passed. So me and my neighbors hogtie the creepy armored dude and the high shirff throws him into jail, along with a bunch of other creepy dudes, and they are all found to be vagrants hired as temps. So then I put ‘MOLON LABE’ and ‘FUTUE TE IPSUM’ on my roof, which had wind damage, and start off on a road trip.
That was MY idea and now those clunks with marshmallows for brains have stolen it? They stole my ideas about high tech weapons and gave that to the Navy and the Army.
It is just SO UNFAIR! It was MY idea, and I don’t even get credit for it!
This just sucks eggs!
We are who we are, as, it is what it is. We act accordingly!
A 21st century- “Operation E Com Con?”… from the movie- Seven Days in May?
Bertverde, one of my favorites. Not sure a lot of the young troops on here have ever seen it. Worth the watch if you haven’t.
I have not seen it but I was just reading up on it. I will try to find a copy of it to watch.
If you like reading, you might like Term Limits by the late Vince Flynn.
Bingo! We have a Bingo!
Ever since I saw that movie for the first time, way back in the dark ages, I’ve believed that it should be mandatory viewing for EVERYONE in the military.
Having said that, I don’t believe that this is a military-led coup in progress. If anything, it seems to me that it would be president mom-jeans’ folks trying to set up an “accident” whereby they could cause some ruckus to start, which they could then use as an excuse to impose some form of martial law, bypass elections, etc.
I don’t mind a little paranoia about those sorts of things, because the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. The first time that we, the people, let down our guard, and some petty boy king or queen thinks they can get away with it, I have no doubt that they’ll try.
respects,
Is there anyone here that was in the 82nd, 101st, 4th Inf, 2nd Inf between 1960-64? Anyone remember Operation(s) Swiftstrike I, II, III? Those too were held on Civilian land in North and South Carolina. Both the 82nd and 101st made Airborne Assaults, landing on leased Watermelon fields, and were done using Rotary wing aircraft frome the 4 divisions mentioned above. This was the test bed for Gen Hamllton Howze’ vision for the Air Mobile division, I was in Swiftsrike I and III. (In school during Swiftstrike II). Had we had facebook back then, and the Alex Jones drooling, tinfoil hat crowd, I am sure they would have been wringing their hands then too.
The more I read facebook, the more I am convinced that I live among some really flaky people. Some even hear their bushes “rustling” when no one is there.
(I had thought rustling was done by cattle thieves until I read here that the dope from the PNW had re-defined the word.)
What would the Alex Jonesians do if they looked up, over their area and saw some of what I see on a near daily basis?:
https://www.facebook.com/frankie.cee.7/media_set?set=a.10200914869209106.1073741843.1086639350&type=3
How about 70,000 troops in an exercise on civilian land. That would have made the tinfoil hat club all shit themselves for sure:
This link has comments from my fellow Currahee veterans of Operation Swift Strike(s):
http://old.506infantry.org/hisabg/hisabnbgarticle26.html
One of our commentors on here answered a question of mine, that if given the command, American troops would not hesitate to kick in American doors.
It’s only going to take one mistake, one injury or one killing, during an ‘exercise’ like this, to turn the tide against the American military in this country, and our current crop of ‘heroes’ will become the enemy. You think there was death and destruction during our first Civil War? You haven’t seen anything yet. Just wait for the next one.
From everything I have heard regarding this operation, it isn’t to instill martial law or whatever those idiots are talking about. It is preparation for a possible invasion of the southern states by Mexican and/or Mexican-allied armed forces. You know, actual military invasion.
Flagwaver, I agree and hope we have the sense to prepare for that and to simply secure our border.
A little late for that, isn’t it?
Do you reckon the current inhabitant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will allow military force to stop the Mexican invasion?
He won’t even permit the Border Patrol to stop them!
If there is an actual armed invasion, past the buffer zone, there’s not much he can do to actually prevent a military response. There are about five military bases within the area of the initial push. If Obama actively prevents military response, then there will doubtlessly be either a coup or immediate action by Congress.
Thanks Zero Ponzdorf. Also thanks for hat tip to “Buffalo Springfield – For What It’s Worth 1967”
reading the article – Dell City? Seriously? That town is small enough that the entrance and exit signs are on one post.