Has anyone heard of this?

[Bright Eyes]

It's from 2002, but i've never heard this

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At the height of the summer, as talk of invading Iraq built in Washington like a dark, billowing storm, the US armed forces staged a rehearsal using over 13,000 troops, countless computers and Dollars 250m. Officially, America won and a rogue state was liberated from an evil dictator.

What really happened is quite another story, one that has set alarm bells ringing throughout America's defence establishment and raised questions over the US military's readiness for an Iraqi invasion. In fact, this war game was won by Saddam Hussein, or at least by the retired marine playing the Iraqi dictator's part, Lieutenant General Paul Van Riper.

In the first few days of the exercise, using surprise and unorthodox tactics, the wily 64-year-old Vietnam veteran sank most of the US expeditionary fleet in the Persian Gulf, bringing the US assault to a halt. What happened next will be familiar to anyone who ever played soldiers in the playground. Faced with an abrupt and embarrassing end to the most expensive and sophisticated military exercise in US history, the Pentagon top brass simply pretended the whole thing had not happened. They ordered their dead troops back to life and "refloated" the sunken fleet. Then they instructed the enemy forces to look the other way as their marines performed amphibious landings. Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play any more. Instead, he sat on the sidelines making abrasive remarks until the three-week war game - grandiosely entitled Millennium Challenge - staggered to a star-spangled conclusion on August 15, with a US "victory".
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Rest at http://www.globalsecurity.org/org/news/2002/020906-iraq1.htm

[3waygeek]

1. ISTR reading about this on Salon.com

back in 2002. I wasn't reading blogs back then, so I don't know if any of them caught this story.

[montanacowboy]

2. Yes I remember that

no surprise huh?

[conscious evolution]

3. I read about that here on DU

You should be able to do a search and find it.

[krispos42]

4. It's in Wikipedia, too

Most recent change was in March 2007, created in May 2004.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002

[PADemD]

5. "Blink", by Malcolm Gladwell

There is a whole chapter, "Paul Van Riper's Big Victory: Creating Structure for Spontaniety," pages 99-146. Worth reading.

"In the spring of 2000, Van Riper was approached by a group of Pentagon officials."

Snip

"The Pentagon was in the earliest stages of planning for a war game that they were calling Millenium Challenge '02."

[BrotherBuzz]

6. I first learned about it from Army Times

August 16, 2002

War games rigged?
General says Millennium Challenge 02 'was almost entirely scripted'

By Sean D. Naylor
Times staff writer

The most elaborate war game the U.S. military has ever held was rigged so that it appeared to validate the modern, joint-service war-fighting concepts it was supposed to be testing, according to the retired Marine lieutenant general who commanded the game’s Opposing Force.

That general, Paul Van Riper, said he worries the United States will send troops into combat using doctrine and weapons systems based on false conclusions from the recently concluded Millennium Challenge 02. He was so frustrated with the rigged exercise that he said he quit midway through the game.

He said that rather than test forces against an unpredictable enemy, the exercise “was almost entirely scripted to ensure a ‘win.’ ”

His complaints prompted an impassioned defense of the war game from Vice Adm. Marty Mayer, the deputy commander of Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va. The command, which sponsored and ran the war game, is the four-star headquarters charged with developing the military’s joint concepts and requirements.

“I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked,” Mayer said.

The Defense Department spent $250 million over the last two years to stage Millennium Challenge 02, a three-week, all-service exercise that concluded Aug. 15. The experiment involved 13,500 participants waging mock war in 17 simulation locations and nine live-force training sites.

<more>

http://www.armytimes.com/legacy/new/0-292925-1060102.php








oh, here's an interesting PBS Frontline interview with Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pentagon/interviews/vanriper.html