Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas

Subject: Scorpions, Chiggers & Sand Fleas
This kid is a Marine and a member of the Knights of Columbus and has a way with words.

From the Sand Pit:

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 the 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 Pushtuns, 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, nor for each other,
nor 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
AK-47'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, 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.

Saucy Jack

Recon 4th Marine in Afghanistan

Semper Fi!

"Freedom is not free...but the U.S. Marine Corps will pay most of your
share".

A veteran is someone who, at one point in his life, wrote a
blank check made payable to 'The United States of America ' for
an amount of 'up to and including my life.' That is Honor, and there
are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

From 4th Recon Marine Division in Afghanistan


Semper Fi', Saucy Jack, Semper Fi'




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