The American Spectator

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"I had to think on my feet and work around a lot of new challenges," she said. "I wouldn't trade the experience for anything, though."

Even in an arena where harmless blue paint bullets are reserved for Marines, death means sitting out the rest of the exercise with a blue casualty card and insurgents only strike with red paint bullets, however, the implications implicit in the training are never completely obscured by the veil of training.

"A fake bomb would go off and some Marines would sit down, 'dead' until the exercise was finished," Butler said. "Over there, those guys aren't going to get up. It's a sobering thought. And if I was having it, those Marines must have been having it, too."

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