Army Makes Training Base Feel Like Iraq

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/fort_dix_iraq

~snip~

Over the past few months, one 40-acre section of Fort Dix has been transformed into "Forward Operating Base," a camp with new gravel roads and 100 tents that replicates an Army base in Iraq.


Similar training bases are going up at installations across the country.


On Thursday, the Army offered civilian base employees and the media a relatively rare glimpse at how the Army trains soldiers to fight in an Iraq where insurgent fighting continues to add to the American death toll.


Fort Dix has trained more mobilizing part-time soldiers than any other base since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Before the camp was built, soldiers training at Dix stayed in barracks and rode uneventfully on buses to each day's drill.

Now, the drills, like the war, are nonstop.




Steve Balestrieri, left, of Charleston, S.C., and others portray Iraqis to help train troops for overseas duty Thursday, Dec. 2, 2004, at Fort Dix, N.J. Fort Dix is one of several military installations now operating a Forward Operating Base, which has a more realistic simulation of war conditions. (AP Photo/Tim Larsen)

[MrUnderhill]

1. Do some of the trainees get shot?

Then it doesn't "feel like Iraq".

[Florida_Geek]

2. Are there dead bodies of children laying in the street

if not it's not Iraq.

[leftchick]

3. are they using napalm and smelling burned flesh?

if not it's not Iraq.

[Scrooge]

4. body armor?

Do they have to supply their own body armor?? If not, then Id say its not like Iraq.

[leftchick]

5. kick

:kick:

[Lisa]

6. have they got other soldiers playing the roles of Halliburton employees

... and mercenaries from private security firms -- being paid several times more, and riding around in well-armored vehicles, wearing the latest body armor?


No? Well, then, it's not Iraq!