Update from Michael Bane (via Matthew Bracken!) on the “weapons dealer training exercise” — it’s been scrapped. Not only was there a lot of public outcry about it, but the .mil paid attention to it. They claim that’s not the reason the exercise was called off, but I’ve got my doubts.
I still think this was probably the brainchild of a clueless mid-level REMFÂ (who’s likely getting his ass handed to him right now). Even so, I’m glad they stopped it. With some of the comments on my earlier post, I was beginning to feel like the proverbial lobster figuring out a bit too late that the water’s starting to boil.
We train here for missions over there, and for the last four years a lot of focus has been put on finding and destroying weapons caches.
Searching for a weapons dealer in Iraq is a lot different from searching for someone with an FFL here in the states. A weapons dealer in Iraq is a middleman for terrorists, funneling weapons smuggled in from Iran or Syria to distribute to terror cells.
All this hubbub has really been a tempest in a teapot. Not that it is a bad thing when the public reminds the public servants who works for who.
Dave Workman says he interviewed a lot of people about this issue, and that it was a tempest in a teapot, built up by the tinfoil hat wearing right wing equivalent of barking moonbats.
You have here an Iowa National Guard unit deploying to Afghanistan, knowing that they will be pulling some missions in urban areas, with no urban areas to train in, deciding to try and improvise in the hometown of half the battalion.
Things were just dandy until some right wing talk jockey got hold of the story and blew it all out of proportion.
If that was the case, DW, whoever planned the exercise should be drummed out of the Corps for planning a useless exercise. There is ZERO similarity between anything in IA and anything in Iraq.
Were the local cops involved going to act like Iraqi cops? One hopes not.
Were the local citizens involved going to be briefed to speak no English?
I would agree with you, DW, but the simple fact remains that this type of exercise has not been done much, if at all, before now.
Combine that with HR45 sitting on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, and there IS cause for worry. Not PSH, as has been displayed in the comments over at Bane’s, but worry.
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RIVRDOG,
Training is never useless. The techniques of a “Cordon and Knock” are the same in IA and Iraq. The players are different, but the essential elements of security and methodical clearing are universal.
Saying that shooting paper targets isn’t “realistic” because “targets don’t shoot back” is a valid point. But it wouldn’t be “training” if the targets did shoot back, it would be “combat”. And “combat” is the very last place you want to get your “training”.
The Marine Corps Reserve has done exercises such as the one proposed successfully for several years. It lets the public see their boys in action up close and gives the a better training experience since they get to use real buildings instead of slabs of plywood slapped together in the middle of some training area on a military installation.
I’m in the Iowa Guard. And using citizens’ homes to practice overseas weapons searches is a load of shit. There’s no comparison between an Afghan village and a midwestern town. We have training areas for this kind of thing, and if a unit wants to do this in their local area, they can set up a mock area in their armory. Even with good intentions, which this probably was, all it does is make troops at ease searching the type of home found in the US, and set precedents for more of these exercises in other towns. Good intentions don’t always make for good ideas, and this is a fine example of that. If that unit can’t come up with a few volunteers to wander around in robes, communicate poorly, and hide simulated weapons under various farm conditions not seen in the US since pre-WWII, I doubt this exercise will teach them much. I’m not rummaging around in citzen’s homes unless it’s to get them to safety or recover bodies. End of story.