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Recon's View Of The Situation
From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan
It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs
at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River
watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my
friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to
avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers
and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts
like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless
the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are
human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That
requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in
handy. I track the couriers, locate the
tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld,
shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders
where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and
record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet.
These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away
from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on
his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel plated Bowie knife
through his frontal lobe. But you know me. I'm a romantic. I've said it
before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a
country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no
government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh
century
warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium
trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot,
you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle
paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that's your idea of a
party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities
of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to
cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a couple
of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for
sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns...actual, living Huns. They LIVE to
fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for
anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves.
They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves
and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the
family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on
each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just
cranky.
I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running
out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write
a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous
Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I
suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is
'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines.
They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are
hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything
else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one book(and not a very good
one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of
the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking
to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to
teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and
sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole.
Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move
on with your lives.
The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter
bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to
the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control. The
worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're
doing over here because you have no idea what we're doing and, really, you
don't want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us
here to do.
You wanna help? Buy Bonds America.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan (via Mr. J. Davis)
Semper Fi
It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs
at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River
watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stake out, my
friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.
I also glance at the area around my ass every ten to fifteen seconds to
avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers
and sand fleas, but them scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts
like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless
the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.
The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that, believe it or not, they are
human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That
requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in
handy. I track the couriers, locate the
tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld,
shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders
where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and
record the new movement.
It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet.
These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away
from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.
I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on
his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel plated Bowie knife
through his frontal lobe. But you know me. I'm a romantic. I've said it
before and I'll say it again: This country blows, man. It's not even a
country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no
government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh
century
warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.
Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium
trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot,
you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle
paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that's your idea of a
party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities
of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to
cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.
I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a couple
of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for
sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns...actual, living Huns. They LIVE to
fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for
anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves.
They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves
and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the
family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savage, heartless beasts who feed on
each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just
cranky.
I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running
out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.
Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write
a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous
Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I
suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is
'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines.
They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are
hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything
else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.
They've spent their entire lives reading only one book(and not a very good
one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of
the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking
to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to
teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and
sticks you in the eye with it.
OK, enough. Snuffle will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole.
Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good at it.
Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move
on with your lives.
The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter
bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to
the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control. The
worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're
doing over here because you have no idea what we're doing and, really, you
don't want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us
here to do.
You wanna help? Buy Bonds America.
Saucy Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan (via Mr. J. Davis)
Semper Fi
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