Apollo Creed Coaches Fake Killing Machines In The Desert
Somewhere in the Mojave Desert, Hollywood is doing its part for the war effort by lending some of its personnel and reality-simulating expertise to help troops prepare for the battle conditions they may face overseas. Reports the NY Times:
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.
And who is the mad genius whose coaching of faux insurgents is so incredibly effective that soldiers are driven to bouts of pre-tramautic stress disorder? Carl Weathers. Yes, really (though this amazing fact isn't revealed until about halfway through the article). We want to be happy about the unexpected second act to Weathers' acting career, but with the countless billions already pumped into the war, it's hard not to be disappointed that the military couldn't meet Stallone's quote.
