Homeland: Lambs Eat Oats and Does Eat Oats and Little Goats Eat K-Rations

  

Fantasy isn’t just for domestic consumption. Berman visited a military training facility at Fort Polk, La., known as The Box. The Box is a simulated Iraq, set on 100,000 acres, populated with Arabic-speaking Iraqi employees. The facility has 18 mock villages populated by 1,000 role-players who simulate Iraqi civilians and insurgents.

Many of the simulated Iraqis are, in fact, Iraqi immigrants. Berman explains that play-acting as insurgents can be a full-time job. You don’t have be an immigrant or an Arabic speaker to play a role in the Fort Polk drama. Plenty of Anglophone locals consider it their patriotic duty to simulate terrorists to educate the troops about the real Iraq.

from: Nina Berman “Homeland” review/interview by Lindsay Beyerstein (Alternet)

Welcome to the Iraq training simulation at Fort Polk, where — in a thoroughly obsessive, if totally misbegotten notion about authenticity — it completely matters to American national security whether exactly six, rather than eight, as opposed to ten goats should be let loose to roam around.

“Yes We Can” still play?

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(images © Nina Berman)