IF IT WALKS LIKE A DUCK AND QUACKS LIKE A DUCK...

Iraqis line up outside the gates of Range 54 daily, ready to hand over weapons in exchange for cash.

Just don’t call it a weapons buy-back program.

Under coalition guidelines, a weapons buy-back program is not allowed, said Lt. Col. Hank Arnold, commander for the camp’s 2nd Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division.

“What we call it is a ‘weapons reward program,’ for guys that turn in caches,” said Arnold, 39, from Pensacola, Fla. “We can’t give you $20 per RPG [rocket-propelled grenade]; that’s a weapons buy-back program. What we can do is give you a reward for locating and helping us … find a cache.”

So nearby villagers collect a bunch of weapons that qualifies as a cache. About 40 Iraqis a week turn in loads of weapons to the camp in northern Iraq; half of them are members of the Coalition for Iraqi National Unity (CINU), said Capt. Jeff Csoka, assistant operations officer.

The group, which says its purpose is to promote peace and unity among tribes and coalition forces, scours the area for weapons, Csoka said...

“Personally, I think it’s a wrong idea to say we’re not going to buy back weapons,” Arnold said. “The argument from the big guys is, ‘Well, if we start buying weapons, then we become part of the weapons market and people smuggle them in just to turn them into us for money.’”

But Arnold said, “Hey, they’re smuggling them anyway. I would much rather get an RPG rocket given to me that I bought for $20 with the safety pin in the nose than have the son of a bitch fly at me 300 feet per second with the safety pin out.”