This Jade Helm nonsense is paranoid hysteria. It would be hysterical if it weren’t so sad. I’ve posted the above article because I find it fairly well reasoned and reasonable – from an otherwise conspiracy site.
1. The military has always done large scale exercises in the U.S. Pre-WW2 there were famous maneuvers in Louisiana involving combined arms including armored forces. Was Patton practicing to invade the US? No, he was practicing to fight in Europe. It’s just that the Europeans would have objected vehemently to using their land as training ground.
2. Where else would they do them? And some of the primary missions of SOCOM are counter insurgency, insurgency, and direct action. The last two involve a high percentage of scenarios where personnel might find themselves stranded in hostile territory. So where should they train?
3. They have ongoing training exercises involving their insurgency mission as well. For decades they've run op Robin sage (I think it's called) in NC where the SF teams actually train locals to be guerrillas. Unlike in TX, where whackos seem to be coming out of the woodwork, the people in the Robin Sage AO actually enjoy participating in the exercise and some are “regulars”. Either playing the role of guerrilla trainees, informants, or noncombatants. Does this operation mean the US military is planning to conduct guerrilla warfare in the US?
4. I personally participated in a large exercise involving most of the east coast, divided into multiple hostile and friendly areas. For me, as a lowly LT, it ultimately involved spending a few uncomfortable nights in the swamps of Camp Lejeune kicking the USMC opfor’s butt (at least that’s how I remember it and I’m sticking to it.  )
5. That brings me to one of the missions revealed in the map – the JOAX. Forced entry and seizure of a hostile airfield is one of the primary missions of the 82nd Airborne Division along with the 75th Ranger Regiment. It is regularly practiced as it would form the basis of entry into a hostile or less than friendly environment. It looks like a JOAX is explicitly located on this map. It looks to me like that black box that shows the area for it includes Lackland AFB and/or Randolph AFB. That’s what they do folks – they parachute in a “seize” an airfield – usually on an existing AFB or Army base. That’s called training.
6. When you are training to run operations over a wide geographical area (like Afghanistan, or the Middle East), at some point you need to practice running operations over a wide geographical area. I imagine that, for example, they will station the command elements in the blue areas on the map but need to run the operations in the red areas. There is no substitute for actual geographical distance when that is what you are training for. I suspect that a lot of this will be a “paper” exercise. Although those are now done through computer simulations. So, for example, there may be some operations (like the JOAX), or maybe a hostage rescue (the CRF event) that are carried out by actual forces against other active duty forces playing OPFOR. But there might also be a lot of simulated operations also being performed (airstrikes, other raids and conventional force deployments) that are only done on the computer. The goal of positioning command elements in remote places is to make the simulations appear as real as possible inside their operations centers.
7. I'm skeptical of the conspiracy folks for another huge reason. While I have argued on this site that rank and file soldiers and marines would be more than willing to follow order and fire on Americans depending on how those Americans are being portrayed, I do not think the same of special operations types. Of all the military, if it came to a crack down on us, I think special forces types would likely side with the patriots against the government. They are all smart and trained to operate independently. In addition, I know a bunch of Specops folks. I don’t know any that have any respect for Obama. Those on active duty cannot express it – but that doesn’t mean they are just going to follow orders and conduct a military takeover on his behalf either. Not just follow orders. It would be the everyday soldiers and marines that would follow orders and fire on Americans.
8. I have yet to see one conspiracy theorist that has proposed one plausible or even semi-realistic scenario as to how these troops could accomplish the alleged objectives of a military takeover. In addition, there aren't enough Specops types out there to conquer Texas. Especially when some significant number of them would go over to the side of the Texans.
9. A minor point but the fact that they put the 15 on the end of Jade Helm indicates to me that they've done jade helm exercises in previous years.
Alex Jones is the white Al Sharpton. And this is his Tawana Brawley. This gulch is dedicated to reason. Keep your wits about you folks and don’t give in to the hysteria. There are enough real threats to our liberty out there.