# Somewhere in Afghanistan...



## Matt308 (Jan 18, 2009)

I won't vouch for its athenticity, but it makes for a good read. As I received it...
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_Thought you might find this interesting.

This is from our neigbor in Yuma. Jim is a retired Delta pilot and a Marine fighter pilot. The letter comes from his son serving in Afghanistan. Jim asked me to pass on the facts to others.

Merry Christmas, I'm glad I'm here instead of there. 



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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 Mountainsalong 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 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 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, Reconnaissance Marine in Afghanistan: Semper Fidelis
Bottom of Form_


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## Njaco (Jan 18, 2009)

If even half of this is true..... God I want to paste this across the forehead of every Cindy Sheehan, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank and every other bunny-hugging idiot who thinks we can "sit and talk things out".

Nice post, Matt.


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## Aaron Brooks Wolters (Jan 19, 2009)

Thank you Matt. Much appreciated. It's nice to hear the truth from time to time.


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## timshatz (Jan 20, 2009)

Great post. Forwarding it to other Jars.


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## renrich (Jan 27, 2009)

Thanks, Matt, your effort is much appreciated. Of course, what is truly going on right now in Afghanistan and for that matter in Iraq is a great mystery because of our wonderful media here in the US. Unless it is sensational or unfavorable to our interests the media won't report it. It will be interesting when Obama trains his focus on Afghanistan to see how our media handles it.


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## evangilder (Jan 27, 2009)

> 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.



Friggin classic warrior prose. Love it!


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## RabidAlien (Jan 28, 2009)




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## Bill G. (Jan 30, 2009)

Six and a half years we have been taking the war to the enemy in Afghanistan and Iraq. The liberal press still hasn't figured out how to report. If they can't spin it negative to the GOP or spin it positive to the dems, then report nothing!

I was in Iraq 2003 - 2004. It was the same then. A Sergeant First Class in the Iowa Signal Battalion my Signal Company was attached to had access to all of the raw wire service reports going out of Iraq. And he saw how few good news ones were never used. So he compiled a list of these unused stories. He e-mailed this to 13 friends. You can guess what happened. Forward, forward, forward! I even got it forwarded to me TWICE!

I got to talk to him once we were all back in Kuwait waiting for our flight back to the States. He told me that his homecoming back at his Armory was going to be most interesting. He said that there would be a lot of press there. He had Generals that wanted to shake his hand for that. Others were wanting to bust him.

I don't know how many letters and e-mails I did telling the friends back home that I wasn't runnin' and gunnin' everyday. Or staying in a bunker all the time because of indirect fire. Or getting blown up by IEDs or other stuff. I had it pretty soft. That is one perk of being 50 over there and in Signal. Just sit climate controlled box in the back of a Humvee. Keep the signal stuff up and keep the generator fueled and everyone is happy. And I get to constantly check the system by e-mailing my friends back home. 

Thank GOD for men like this Marine!

And thank GOD for letters and e-mails from the military. This is how the unreported news gets back home.

Bill G.


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