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It's here.

Operation Jade Helm 15, the military training exercise that captured the fancy of conspiracy theorists earlier this year, begins Wednesday in a dozen Texas counties and across the Southwest. It will continue through the summer.

The launch comes about two months after what the military describes as a benign training exercise became an international sensation, spurred by speculation that it is the beginning of a federal takeover, perhaps with the help of a string of mysteriously closed Wal-Marts. The anxieties seemed to reach a boiling point in April at a meeting of the Bastrop County Commissioners Court, where a military spokesman was peppered with questions about the operation's true purpose.

Gov. Greg Abbott gave the theories a high-profile platform when he asked the Texas State Guard to keep an eye on the exercise to ensure Texans' "safety, constitutional rights, private property rights and civil liberties will not be infringed." Issued shortly after the Bastrop meeting, the directive drew bipartisan criticism, but Abbott stood by his order, maintaining he was simply responding to constituent concerns.

On the eve of the exercise, state Rep. John Cyrier, who represents Bastrop, said the frenzy has largely died down.





"I think a lot of the questions have been answered since it first kind of hit Bastrop County Commissioners Court," said Cyrier, a Republican. "It seems like it's been pretty quiet, at least on my end of it."

The military has said citizens can expect little interference with their day-to-day lives as the operation gets underway, save a slight uptick in noise and traffic in their neck of the woods. Still, officials have admitted the exercise is unusual in its "size and scope," playing out in seven southwestern states.

The operation will include 1,200 service members, according to Mark Lastoria, a spokesman for Army Special Operations Command. However, he suggested, they probably will not stand out as they go about their business.

"They will never all be at the same place, at the same time," Lastoria said in an email, adding that 700 of the service members are participating in the exercise for only five days at Camp Bullis in San Antonio.

Wherever the action happens, a group called Counter Jade Helm has taken it upon itself to serve as a watchdog. The organization is dispatching members to various sites of the operation and soliciting any information locals may have on how the exercise is going in their communities.

At the same time, it has been careful to distance itself from the seedier elements of the Jade Helm furor, branding itself as an effort to help the military's efforts, not thwart them.

"CJH is not about conspiracy theories," the group's website reads. "This exercise is not about the what-ifs of our government."

Abbott's office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday on how it was preparing for the exercise.

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That meme pretty much sums it up.

We’re aware that a number of conspiracy theory sites are attempting to get people spun-up about JADE HELM, a military exercise that is occurring in parts of nine states, primarily involving special forces units.

If you’re really interested in the theories, you can read about them on Wikipedia.

The fact of the matter is that similar operations have been run around the nation for decades, and most aren’t known to the public at all… even when, like JADE HELM, they are in plain sight.

Here in North Carolina, ROBIN SAGE has been running since 1974 across 15 North Carolina counties that make up the fictional Republic of Pineland, and will start again tomorrow:


Robin Sage, a role-playing exercise that is the culminating event of Special Forces training, will be staged over several counties in the Cape Fear region between Wednesday and Aug.4.

In Robin Sage, Special Forces candidates support guerrilla forces in the fictional country of Pineland, which encompasses parts of 15 counties. The exercise has been held regularly since 1974.

It is the final training exercise before students graduate and move to an assignment with one of the Army’s Special Forces units.

The students participating – from Fort Bragg’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School – will be tasked with infiltrating areas in small groups to train guerrilla forces to move, fight, communicate and provide medical aid, officials said.

The only real difference between JADE HELM and ROBIN SAGE is that JADE HELM is occurring in more widely varying terrain across a wider geographic area, and that it’s new to people in these areas. Here in central N.C., it’s just background noise, like the sound of jets near Air Force bases, or the sound of artillery strikes in the distance several times a year at Bragg.

Folks, if there was ever going to be a Special Forces-led military coup in this nation, it would be against the federal government, not on behalf of it. More than 1,100 active duty and retired Green Berets—who specialize in raising local forces to overthrow governments—made known their position and opposition to the tyrannical tendencies of the Obama Administration in 2013, where they very politely hinted to President Obama that they would  not kindly accept unconstitutional attempts gut the Second Amendment.

JADE HELM is just the latest in a very long line of military readiness exercises.

Let it go.

Coups don’t hold press conferences, nor do they carry out their attacks in rural areas miles outside of small towns with zero strategic importance.

If you find yourself giving the JADE HELM conspiracy theories any credence at all, begin doubting your sanity.

Rest assured, we already do.