We Get Stories

What can you believe?
Steve Quayle and a handful of echoes are telling some wild story about Chinese troops, or at least Chinese forward battle equipment storage, just south of Laredo, Texas. Supposedly a truck driver delivered a load of groceries down that way, and was directed by an armed guide in the passenger seat and escort vehicles. Then another fellow went down and checked where he thought it had to be. If you follow the main highway south by southwest from Laredo, the estimated sixty miles brings you just about to Arroyo Blanco. Between there and Monterey (another sixty plus miles) and scanning quite a bit side to side, there is nothing matching the description. There’s even a video someone made showing a search using Google Earth and the map coordinates supposedly given, but it’s a huge cheap housing addition.
While serving with the US Army in Europe, I visited quite a few combat equipment storage sites. These things are huge, with truly substantial fences, armed guards and attack dogs. There are a couple of small buildings, and acres of huge steel storage buildings. Exposure to weather is a serious threat to idle combat vehicles, most of which are poorly designed and built by the lowest bidder. The soldiers stationed at these places are almost all mechanics and other equipment specialists who do nothing except a constant rotation of various maintenance tasks on everything there. I can’t imagine the Chinese military would be less fastidious, so either you’ll see tons of vehicles in orderly formation or a huge collection of really large buildings. You would see fences strong enough to show up on aerial photography.
In other words, you won’t see them on any mapping site, nor on Google Earth. At the very least, you would expect to see masking, something which obscures what’s really there. For example, I invite you to check Google Maps, and search for Brunssum, The Netherlands. Switch to the satellite view. Right near the center of town where Google puts the marker is a junction between Rimburgsweg (running generally east and west) and Prins Hendricklaan. Just south of this junction is an obscured map feature, labeled “AFNORTH” (Allied Forces Northern Europe). When I was there, it was AFCENT HQ (Allied Forces Central Europe). All the references I can find show it still is, so I’m sure it’s just goofy Google labeling, but I don’t really care. It’s obscured because it’s a NATO installation.
It was originally built as a coal mine camp, as the whole thing is perched on high ground. The waste from the mine (called “slag”) was piled just east of there. Rimburgsweg curves a bit, then runs almost straight east from town. Virtually everything north of that line is high ground, the old “slag heap” — the nickname now used by everyone in that area. The ground under all the greenery slopes steeply upward to a flat table, and is mostly black rubble. Near town, branching north from Rimburgsweg runs Ganzepool, and the first major right turn is Kranenpool. That street runs between a bunch of obscured images, which should obviously represent some sort of “secret” government map feature. You’ll also see a sports field, and it’s no secret this is used by the NATO personnel.
If you were there driving or walking around, you’d see everything without much trouble. Among the sights would be those huge steel buildings behind tightly guarded fences I mentioned earlier. You notice, though, all this obscuring indicates pretty large land space used for this activity. Google can hide the appearance, but not the amount of land space used. By the way, those are NATO installations in Brunssum, but just down the road a ways is a smaller base owned solely by the US in Schinnen, not obscured by Google. It’s another old converted mining installation just west of town, tightly jammed between the A76 Autobahn and a line of trees (shading a creek). Lots of buildings and parked cars. Zoom in close enough and you can see the fenceline. You can see the gated entrance at the west end of Borgerweg, and a small gate shack standing between the curved entrance and exit lanes (the first building next to the gate on the north side is the Military Police building). Even though the aerial shot is old, it’s still much newer than my memories ending in early 1993.
While the aerial view of Mexico isn’t quite as new as the ones for the Netherlands, you should still see something visible from higher altitudes (zoomed out) that would give it away in terms of land use. It’s not there. Steve Quayle is infamous for this crap, and it marks him as a liar. It’s possible he doesn’t actually know any better, but that doesn’t change the effect of his spreading such crazy rumors.
On the other hand, we have the story of Russian troops massing on the border of Georgia near the passes into South Ossetia. Take a quick look at maps and you’ll see how short a run it would be from there to the Iranian border. While the MSM isn’t making much of this, it does come via more or less reputable sources. I doubt China intends to invade the US over the Mexican border, but I’m quite sure Russia would roll quickly down to help Iran due to treaties and trade deals.
Oh, and Russian military planners say they figure an attack on Iran will be sometime this summer.