Borrowed this from another forum N it is reputed to be from an excellent source in military, so take it anyway you may wish but it is a good story.
Thank God for Jar-Heads
Reconnaissance 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 (rear) 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 -----.
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 a bloody ear 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 ---- 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 others
barbarism. Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.
I'm freezing my (rear) 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 bull---- 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
Reconnaissance Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fidelis
Original message written on 7/16/08 4:58 PM, by RHG
(Email address withheld)