The Pentagon's Homegrown Theater of War (WaPo)

[kpete]

The Pentagon's Homegrown Theater of War

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, January 3, 2006; C01



Grandma used to say that there's a silver lining inside every dark cloud and maybe she was right. This month, Harper's magazine has found a big, heartwarming silver lining inside that gloomy old Global War on Terrorism. Here it is:

Our government has hired a bunch of poor souls who lost their arms and legs in accidents and has rigged them up with bags of fake blood so they can play wounded civilians in war games down at Fort Polk, La.


"The best way to describe what we're doing here," says one of the Army intelligence officers who plan the games, "is that we're producing a very complex movie with a huge number of plotlines and a very high budget."

How high is the budget?

"The military spends an average of $9 million staging each 3 1/2 -week mission rehearsal exercise," writes Wells Tower, author of this jaw-droppingly bizarre article. Which works out to about $117 million a year, he writes.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/02/AR2006010201543_pf.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Imagine if they spent that money

doing something useful like sending these officers to New Orleans to help rebuild the city? Oh yes, I know, they've got better things to do, like play war games. At least some disabled people got to participate.