(NaturalNews) Hundreds of U.S. special forces soldiers operating undetected among the civilian population is disconcerting enough for foreign media to report, but it doesn’t seem like a big deal to most American media.

Operation Jade Helm 15, a Department of Defense “training exercise” set to kick off in July, last until mid-September and involve more than 1,200 Navy SEALs, Green Berets, Marine Recon units and other special operatives in several southern and southwestern states, would, for all the world, look like an invasion to the U.S. State Department if it were happening among the civilian populations of Ukraine, Russia or China.

But when they are American military forces, well, that’s no big deal because after all, “nothing like that could happen here.”

Britain’s Daily Mail newspaper has at least captured the essence of the concern among a growing segment of the American public, namely, why does this massive exercise have to take place among the civilian population of the United States? What are these troops training to do?

What is the real purpose behind Jade Helm?

The paper noted:

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 will drop from planes while carrying weapons loaded with blanks in what military officials have dubbed Realistic Military Training.

But with residents of the entire states of Texas and Utah dubbed ‘hostile’ for the purposes of the exercises, Jade Helm has some concerned the drills are too realistic.

Some have said the exercises are a precursor to martial law and, of course, the military has denied any such talk. In a recent interview with Stars and Stripes, officials with U.S. Army Special Operations Command, which is responsible for planning Jade Helm, pushed back against such speculation.

“That notion was proposed by a few individuals who are unfamiliar with how and why USASOC conducts training exercises,” Army Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria, a USASOC spokesman, said in an email. “This exercise is routine training to maintain a high level of readiness for Army Special Operations Forces because they must be ready to support potential missions anywhere in the world on a moment’s notice.”

He went onto say that the training was to take place in the Southwest because the terrain is similar to that which Special Ops forces will likely operate overseas.

That said, if the military wants an arid, dry environment for Specials Ops training, the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., is ideally suitable terrain, as you can see in this Army Public Affairs video regarding the first flight of a new drone. In fact, hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops trained there before being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan. But with the war over in Iraq and with U.S. soldiers at a bare minimum in Afghanistan, where will these Special Ops troops be operating from, that would require them to train in the American Southwest?

Why the Southwest? Why now?

So, is the Pentagon instead interested in finding out how its Specials Ops forces will operate among civilian populations that talk, walk, and dress like they do? If so, for what purpose?

Again, if these kinds of exercises were being held by competitor nations, our suspicions would be quite high that those governments were likely preparing for some sort of action against their own populations.

Given the tens of millions of dollars the Department of Defense has spent on the construction of realistic training centers in California and elsewhere around the United States, and understanding that we would be suspicious of other governments conducting similar exercises among their own populations, it is entirely reasonable to question both the purpose and ultimate utility of Jade Helm.

Sources:

//www.dailymail.co.uk
//www.stripes.com
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b-Gh27iXws
//www.nationaldefensemagazine.org