HOW DO YOU REDUCE CASUALTIES?

You hear this mantra all the time from military people: train like you fight; fight like you train. And what do you hear all the time from soldiers interviewed in Iraq? "We weren't trained for this." Not after the next rotation. Lessons learned are being applied, and apparently, with a vengence. They're running simulations using the laser technology that had been used in large simulated tank battles to measure casualties and chart what happened and how at the larger training centers only now the simulations involve crowds angry over water cut-offs turning into mobs and providing cover for suicide bombers.

Who's playing the Iraqis in these simulations, by the way? In a wonderful move, the Iraqi-American community of Dearborn, still looking for a way to contribute.

This is the kind of informative, useful, balanced reporting, stories you can't read anywhere else, that used to mark the Times as the best paper in the country.