And Now The Rest of The Story-

News from Afghanistan
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 butt 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 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. I've said it before and I'll say it
again: This country blows. 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-ol d sons
into human cockfights to defend the family honor
Huns, roaming packs of savages, 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. Snuffie 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.

Jack
Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi