U.S. troops train to face deadly insurgency
By
BILL CLARK, Gannett News Service
FORT POLK, La. — When the live fire starts, rural Louisiana becomes the hostile Iraqi countryside.  Here at Fort Polk's Joint Readiness Training Center, U.S. forces bound for the dusty plains and angry towns of Iraq get a crash course in fighting and surviving the tenacious insurgency they'll soon face.
Troops spend several weeks under simulated attack by hooded insurgents, running convoys through deadly gantlets, staying alive through POW/hostage situations and eluding the infamous IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that have claimed many American lives. The center includes mock villages for simulating the kind of tight-quartered urban warfare American forces now must contend with in Iraq as well as vast open hills to mimic conditions the supply convoys face as they drive north out of Kuwait. Local civilians play Iraqi villagers, mayors and shopkeepers, while soldiers from the 1st Battalion Airborne 509th Infantry act as the insurgents. The exercises and training conditions are based on the continuous flow of feedback the center's officers receive about conditions in Iraq. It's as real as it gets. Until it gets real.
|
PART 1
By John Yaukey, GNS
 American and
Iraqi forces already are struggling with a full-blown insurgency that
has cost hundreds of lives. If the Iraq's Jan. 30 elections go badly and
its political landscape falls into chaos, Americans will be facing a
debacle that easily rivals Vietnam.
PART 2
By Gordon Trowbridge, Army Times
U.S. forces in Iraq constantly
confront enemies hiding among innocents, and innocents
stumbling into a fate they don’t deserve. It's a war often fought in seconds with some of its most important decisions
made by young privates, not generals.
PART 3
By John Yaukey, GNS
As Iraqi security gain
confidence, the Pentagon will gradually scale down the U.S. force size. The
hope is that this will reduce U.S. casualties, lower the American profile
in Iraq and start reassuring Americans that there is an end in sight.
|
