Warfare for Dummies

A
scary insight into the level on which our fighting men and woment are
trying to overcome the language and culture gap on the ground in Iraq.
Most of these brave American boys and girls are in their teens and early
twenties, and are relying on these fold-up cheat sheets to cheat death,
stay alive, and husband Iraq down the garden path to enlightened democracy.

A
company named Kwikpoint makes them, and the military hands them out to
personnel. The guides help English-speaking personnel communicate with
prisoners, would-be-detainees, interrogatees, and so on. Don’t speak
Farsi or Iraqi Arabic? Need to tell a prisoner to drop trou and get horizontal
beneath your boot, pronto? Point to the infographic.

Visually, they’re unsettling. The images are functional icons, like highway
signs or web UI buttons, so they reflect a simplified aesthetic — like
early childhood
storybooks. The subject matter is violent, but the look is "see spot run" or "happy
Lego people at play." The funniest one is a two-part diagram where a man
is asked to remove his toupee so the interrogator can determine whether or not
any weapons are stashed beneath (shown in thumbnail here).

from xeni
jardin at Boingboing