Posted on 01/07/2009 6:19:19 AM PST by Kimmers
Here is a US Marine who is not afraid to tell it like it is. Political Correctness doesn't mean beans to this tough young warrior.
>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 Semper Fi
Pray for our troops and their leadership....
Semper Fi
I see that Force Recon Marines have not lost their broad grasp of the English language to communicate. They are Marine’s Marines!
May God bless and keep them safe. May He smite their enemies, with extreme prejudice.
Semper fi,
(50 years ago today, I started boot camp at Parris Island Platoon 102)
outstanding post
I have no idea where the public get the idea Marines aren’t eloquent.
That is some of the most gifted prose out there.
April of this year will be 45 years ago for me ... MCRD Parris Island Plt. 236.
They can write, they just can’t read.
< /john kerry>
Thank you and God Bless you for that service.
I got my 2LT's commission in the US Army on June 6th 1980. I thought that being commissioned as an infantry officer on D-Day was kind of appropriate. Between the reserves and active time I went 14 years in both infantry and armor and never heard a round fired in anger. I was only able to salute the bodies of my friends who fought and died because they were in the right spot at the right time, God keep them all. I was forced out in 1994 by the Clinton Reduction in Force, damn him to hell. I'd be in the sandbox now as a light colonel or a full bull colonel and I'd be in much better physical condition than my current decrepit state of affairs. Basically at deaths door if I'm not careful.
Recon marines aren't the only folks with a broad grasp of the English language. I once listened as an old grizzled SGM (Sergeant Major) at the Brigade level cursed for 15 minutes and never once repeated himself over some BS paperwork requirement handed down by the puzzle palace of a peacetime Pentagon.
Great letter but it appears old and possibly fake?
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/freezing.asp
John Murtha? < spit >
I did a snopes check using the title and it came up empty....glad you found it....like you said, great letter......
EXCELLENT.
THX.
“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.”
Even if they’re probably known, why broadcast tactics?
*********************************************************
I see that Force Recon Marines have not lost their broad grasp of the English language to communicate. They are Marine’s Marines!
May God bless and keep them safe. May He smite their enemies, with extreme prejudice.
Semper fi,
(50 years ago today, I started boot camp at Parris Island Platoon 102)
************************************************************
Oh yea, sweet music to my ears. This Marine need to write a book.
I was in Paris Island 18 years ago today, Remember having chow hall duty around New Years day so I may have been serving SOS on this day.
I never thought I'd say this, but I'm glad that my war was in a relatively civilized VietNam (it's also warmer and not nearly as mountainous).
LOL - I humped plenty of ruck up and down the Seven Sisters - Welcome Home!
what was it like firing a cross bow? was it your T.O. weapon
Do you still have your "leather neck" cover, and is it still pliable after all these years?
What was it like fighting with the original "Swamp Fox" Francis Marion
Thanks I was feeling old for a minute there realizing that I was there 32 years ago, damn, I feel young now, kinda
(/grin)
I was saying that while on the ship on the way to Vietnam. Must have been all those Korean War documentaries I watched on Sunday mornings.
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