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| Video
Game Celebrates Fallujah Slaughter |
 BreakForNews.com,
3rd Dec, 2004 11:00ET
by Fintan Dunne, Editor
Research KathyMcMahon EXCLUSIVE
If you thought the new video game inviting
players to try their virtual skills at
assassinating JFK was tasteless, hold on to
your hat. A just-released mission in the
Kuma wargame series is themed “Fallujah:
Operation al-Fajr." It re-creates the
recent assault on Fallujah, which may have
left thousands of civilians dead.
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Players join U.S. Marines and Army soldiers in
their attack on the Jolan district in Fallujah.
For the making of “Fallujah: Operation
al-Fajr,” Kuma Reality Games used detailed
satellite imagery of Jolan.
Publicity material for yesterday's new game says
players "dodge sniper fire and protect
civilians," while fighting to secure the
Jolan district.
"Protect civilians"?
UNREAL REALISM
Perhaps the action isn't really that
"realistic" after all. Civilians in
Fallujah outnumbered rebels by perhaps thirty to
one. They bore the brunt of a relentless US
bombardment of Jolan. News media reports say this
included 2,000-pound bombs, helicopter gunships
and artillery.
Independent journalists and Arab media say
napalm-like weapons and poison gas were also
deployed. Reporter, Dahr Jamail told
BreakForNews.com that witnesses saw people
poisoned, fall to the ground and die. Other
reports describe firebombs spewing lethal contents
which adhered to skin and burned unquenchably.
Only later did the soldiers --the real ones-- come
to root out any "resistance" left alive.
This involved the use of cluster bombs and
grenades tossed into homes, with devastating
results in at least one case. Cowering inside was
a family - not virtual terrorists. A young boy was
hospitalized with grenade fragment injuries.
Don't expect that kind of realism from the
latest Kuma offering. “Fallujah: Operation
al-Fajr,” is the sanitized electronic world of
good guys and bad guys. Just like Bush's war. And
you can guess who the good guys are.
The Kuma /War series is lovingly following the
action around Iraq, and modeling game chapters on
set-piece recreations of real military operations.
Players have battled the Medi army in the south
and hunted down Uday and Qusay Hussein. We are now
up to Mission #28.
In the coming weeks, game subscribers will get
missions that re-create current combat in Fallujah
and elsewhere in Iraq.
SEAMLESS INTEGRATION
Many missions are being developed in cooperation
with the US military.
“Fallujah: Operation al-Fajr” even contains a
discussion with Major General Thomas L. Wilkerson,
USMC (ret) on the strategy behind the fight for
control of Fallujah. The last mission before
Fallujah, was "Ramadi Convoy Exercise,"
based on the same training mission KumaWar modeled
for CASCOM - the US Army Combined Arms Support
Command.
Kuma Reality Games has just opened voting for its
"Stories from the Front" contest. The
contest asked soldiers to contribute stories from
their actual experiences in the battlefield. The
winner's story will become an upcoming mission.
The winner will be featured with three friends as
characters in the re-creation of the winning story
The eligible entries have been slimmed to
finalists like: Beneath the Saddam Mosque, the
story of a rescue team searching for a kidnapped
woman in the tunnels beneath a
mujahedeen-controled mosque; Baghdad Cowboy
details an ambush on enemies to rescue a troubled
Fallujah convoy; and Saddam City Shocker centers
around a squad that fights its way across a bridge
into Saddam City.
This is the seamless integration of military
gaming and real military action. The two have
become one. Virtually. A seamless virtual reality
whose barbarity and insensitivity is puzzling to
the "reality-based" community.
In Fallujah, during the bombing families could
hear the screams from those whose homes had been
hit, but they had to keep their heads down and
pray.
Kuma should have taped those screams.
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