GIs 'die' in mock Iraqi villages
Today, in a desert region nearly the size of Rhode Island, the network of 12 virtual Iraqi villages are eerie in their likeness to the real things. That is the idea, of course: that American soldiers will find the environment so real that they will make their mistakes here first, so they do not make them in Iraq. One of the villages is Medina Jabal, a hamlet of wooden huts and gravel roads at the base of a ravine about 35 miles from Death Valley.
It is a marriage of military technology and Hollywood fakery; some 350 Arabic-speaking Iraqi-Americans and plainclothes Nevada National Guardsman live here almost year-round to offer American trainees what one officer described as "a vortex of chaos."
The insurgents even get acting lessons, coached by Carl Weathers, best known for his portrayal of the boxer Apollo Creed in the "Rocky" films.
A single afternoon in Medina Jabal crystallizes all the confusions and ambiguities of fighting in Iraq. None of the villagers of Medina Jabal are allowed to speak English, and all encounters must be carried out with an interpreter.
Insurgents lurk inside the town, but as in Iraq, they are invisible. The guerrillas maintain a underground tunnel network, smuggle in weapons, and plot nearly continuous attacks on American forces.
The closest American base, where most of the trainees sleep, is only a few hundred yards away, and the insurgents shoot mortar shells at it every night - just as they do in places like Ramadi.
They plant roadside bombs, booby-trap dead dogs, kidnap soldiers who get separated from their patrols, and drive suicide bombs into American checkpoints. The simulations are so real that they have impressed even those who have seen the real thing up close.
"This is good training for guys who haven't been there yet," said Sgt. Matthew Boone, 25, from Anderson, Ind., while standing atop a desert peak inside the training ground. "I never got anything like this before I went to Afghanistan." When fighting breaks out, Army trainers who act as referees immediately decide who will be recorded as wounded or killed.
But scoring kills is not the main objective at Medina Jabal; gaining the trust of the locals is. When an American soldier loses his cool and kills Iraqi civilians, a simulated television crew from "Al Jazeera" scurries out to videotape the screaming and grieving Iraqis. The inflammatory video is then broadcast over and over on the villages' television network, just as in Iraq. "It's very realistic here," said Sgt. Shawn Stillabower of the 10th Division, a Houston native who is going back for his third tour in Iraq after he finishes the training course. "Sometimes, it's really got me thinking, 'Am I in Iraq?' " In Medina Jabal, nothing is entirely clear, and that is the point.
The Deadly Hakim
The most prolific killer of American trainees, for instance, is Mansour Hakim, the Iraqi pseudonym for Staff Sgt. Timothy Wilson, 42, a probation officer from Sparks, Nev. In Medina Jabal, Sergeant Wilson, in an Arab dishdasha robe and checkered kaffiyeh headdress, plays the part of a village hot dog salesman who sells his provisions from a stand called "Kamel Dogs Cafe."
To the amazement of American trainers, Sergeant Wilson has found that nearly every American unit entering the training course falls for his tricks - usually leading to catastrophic results. He figures he has "killed" hundreds of American servicemen in his time here. The trap works like this: When the American soldiers first enter Medina Jabal, they usually head straight for the Kamel Dogs stand for a snack. Chatting up the soldiers, " Hakim" asks if the Americans might let him sell his hot dogs inside the nearby American camp, called Forward Operating Base Denver, to make some extra money for his family. The soldiers inevitably agree, and before long, Hakim is ferrying huge loads of hot dogs and charcoal briquettes onto the American base.
In the first few days of the venture, everything proceeds safely; the American soldiers, suspicious of Hakim, search his truck thoroughly. But after four or five days, having decided that he is one of the "good Iraqis," the soldiers begin to wave him and his truck through their checkpoints.
And that is when he strikes. One day, he replaces the charcoal briquettes with Hollywood-grade pyrotechnics, drives the truck deep into the American base and blows it up.
One of the referees appears on the scene with a "God gun" to determine the radius of the blast. The last time Sergeant Wilson got through, in February, the referees determined that 18 Americans were killed and dozens more wounded. The subterfuge has worked seven times. "I'm a bad guy," Sergeant Wilson said with a grin. "And I'm looking for any weakness I can exploit."
On other occasions, American soldiers patrolling Medina Jabal have wandered off alone to get a soda or a hot dog at Hakim's stand. When that happens, the locals seize the soldier, drag him into one of their tunnels, videotape his interrogation for "Al Jazeera" and sometimes kill him.
The lesson for American solders is clear: never trust any Iraqis, no matter how friendly they seem. It is a lesson that, unlearned, has killed many American soldiers on combat duty in Iraq. And if any of the soldiers insist, as they sometimes do, that they really had been searching Hakim's hot-dog truck, it is easy enough to check: videocameras watch over virtually every square inch of Medina Jabal. American trainers can review every attack and every interaction between an American and a villager to see what really happened.
Despite the elaborate fictions of the place, reality sometimes intrudes. Most of the Iraqi-American actors have family in Iraq, and are terrified of having their identities publicized lest those family members be killed by insurgents back home.
None would agree to be interviewed for this article.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/....0501train.php
boy, no wonder Irak is FUCKED.
