¿Visual language of survival?

Iraq visual language survival guides
for military personnel by Xeni Jardin

A friend who recently returned from Baghdad brought me an unusual souvenir: a "visual language survival guide" used by coalition soldiers. It's a sort of show-and-tell folding map intended for both soldiers and private contractors working in Iraq -- with lots of little pictures you can point to in front of an Iraqi person to say things like "is the improvised explosive device hidden under the dead goat?" and "was the bomb maker planning manual or remote detonation?"

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 most surreal one is a two-part diagram in which a man is asked to remove his toupee so the interrogator can determine whether or not weapons are stashed beneath (shown in thumbnail here).



Civilians can buy the Iraq guide online for $11 each: Link. Scanned lo-res excerpts: part one, part two (jpegs, about 200K each). Remix possibilities boggle the mind.