How to train for an enemy troops can’t discern?

updated 5:46 a.m. ET June 6, 2006

MAHMOUDIYAH, Iraq - Allegations that Marines killed unarmed men, women and children in Haditha are prompting questions about whether U.S. troops get proper training for a war against insurgents who walk freely among Iraqi civilians.

The military has adapted its training, but troops say no one arrives in Iraq completely ready for the complexity and stress of a guerrilla war in which insurgents are loosely organized and fight with hit-and-run tactics on the streets of cities crowded with innocent bystanders.

“Nothing is going to prepare you,” Spc. Travis Gillette, a 26-year-old Army infantryman from Coldwater, Mich., said as he pulled deeply on a cigarette. “You can train up all you want, but you’re not going to be prepared until you get here and mingle with the culture.”

The brass does try to prepare soldiers and Marines, though.

From changes in boot camp, where recruits learn the basics of fighting in Iraq, to advanced training centers that teach commanders about urban insurgencies, the U.S. military has tailored its training at home for the mission in Iraq.

Before deploying to Iraq, most Army soldiers spend weeks at the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, Calif., or the Joint Readiness Training Center at Fort Polk, La., immersed in high-tech training scenarios designed to acclimate them to urban combat.

Soldiers conduct patrols in makeshift towns that look like Iraqi villages, with actors behaving as residents would during demonstrations and uprisings.

No practice like the real thing
They are taught how to react to roadside bombs and insurgent gunfire. They spend hours on computerized drills forcing them to decide whether a man in a robe holding a rifle is a threat — sometimes he is, often he isn’t.

Commanders say the exercises give soldiers a base of knowledge by introducing them to decisions they will make every day in Iraq. But they concede the real test is the war itself.

“It helps you with the foundation, but that foundation is where you start in Iraq,” said Lt. Col. Thomas Kunk, commander of the 101st Airborne Division’s 502nd Infantry Regiment.

Facing an unseen enemy daily in Iraq — where allies easily become opponents — often lies far outside the reach of any of their training, soldiers say.

“Nothing can really simulate the situations you have on the battlefield except the battlefield,” said Spc. John Ford, 25, of Magnolia, Ark., a soldier in the 502nd’s Delta Company.

There are guidelines that troops must follow in deciding when to use deadly force.

ID’ing the enemy: ‘Everybody and nobody’
“When they are unarmed, we can’t just shoot ’em, and they know that and use it against us,” said Marine 2nd Lt. Brian Wilson, a 24-year-old platoon commander from Columbia, S.C.

“That’s why this war is so hard. The enemy is everybody and nobody at the same time. All they have to do is put down their AK (assault rifle) on the side of the road and walk.”

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