Iraqi-Americans play mock insurgents in California desert to help train US soldiers

Raw Story
May. 01, 2006

With the aid of Hollywood stuntmen and special effects wizards, 350 Iraqi-Americans act as mock insurgents in the California desert to help train US soldiers, according to a front page story set for Monday's New York Times, RAW STORY has found.

"Most of the Iraqi-American actors here have family in Iraq, and they are terrified of having their identities publicized lest those family members be killed by insurgents back home," reports the Times. "None would agree to be interviewed for this article."

Excerpts from the article written by Dexter Filkins and John F. Burns:

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In a 1,000-square-mile region on the edge of Death Valley, Arab-Americans, many of them from the Iraqi expatriate community in San Diego, populate a group of mock villages resembling their counterparts in Iraq. American soldiers at forward operating bases nearby face insurgent uprisings, suicide bombings and even staged beheadings in underground tunnels. Recently, the soldiers here, like their counterparts in Iraq, have been confronted with Sunni-Shiite riots. At one village, a secret guerrilla revolt is in the works.

With actors and stuntmen on loan from Hollywood, American generals have recast the training ground at Fort Irwin so effectively as a simulation of conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 20 months that some soldiers have left with battle fatigue and others have had their orders for deployment to the war zones canceled. In at least one case, a soldier's career was ended for unnecessarily "killing" civilians.

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...The insurgents even get acting lessons, coached by Carl Weathers, best known for his portrayal of the boxer Apollo Creed in the "Rocky" films.

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FULL ARTICLE HERE