Next:  Here's one hell of a story for your reading. This is supposedly from a Recon Marine in A'stan (passed onto me by a reliable source :)


Just outside of Ab Gach, in the northwest panhandle of Afghanistan between Tajikstan and Pakistan.  November 11, 2001


Bizarre,

It’s fucking 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 goddamn 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, rockpit shithole 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.


...cont.

cont...

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.  And let me tell you something else.  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.  Goddamn cavemen with AK 47’s.  Then again, maybe I’m just cranky.  I’m freezing my cock off on this stupid fucking 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 Judy and Bernie 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.  Sun’ll 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 getting good at it.  Please tell my fellow Americans to turn off their TV sets and move on with their lives.  The story line you are getting from CNN 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 some fucking stocks, America.


Saucy Jack



Who all here wishes he was the one that wrote this? :)

Credit for this letter goes to K.Hunter of SniperCountry.

He's freezing his ass off, but wary of scorpions stinging him? [>:/]

Awesome. Sounds like a viable reality report.

My thoughts too, Raven, scorpions don't like cold, take it from a desert rat that kills a couple each year that try to explore his basement.

If this is real, sounds good.  Tell that boy to make it back and I will buy him pizza till he can't eat.

well, it [i]sounds[/i] great!  Scorpions aside, if it is real, I wish we could send him a pizza with extra cheese and toppings.[beer]

Apparently, scorpions survive in the Afghan winters, although they may be sluggish and finding shelter in mud walls.

Here's a link:

[url]http://chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/deployment/stayinghealthy.asp[/url]

Many years ago I spent a few weeks out in the Nevada desert receiving some desert warfare training.  Anyway I remember being told it was around 110-115 in the day time and high 70's to low 80's at night.  I remember at night we were cold. I don't know if it was because of the wide temperature variation or because of the fact that we had to sit in a hole a night and keep our movement to a minimum.  All I know was we all bitched about how cold it was at night.  Anyway my point is, maybe the letter is true and if it is I wish the guy luck.  

Larry

Can't quite pin it down, but there is something about this letter that sounds like fiction.
It's also making the rounds on the internet via the same paths that every other Net Myth and Legend did, Usenet, BBs, forwarded emails from friends...
The author sounds more like he is writing a men's novel, quaintly interspersed with enough profanity to make it sound conversational.
Hate to say it, but this letter sounds phoney.

This same letter was posted about a week ago on assweb. Personaly I think it's a hoax.

idaho-ar15

Hoax or not?  I don't know.  We are all entitled to our opinions.  But it seems to me that raf does not believe anybody in a combat arms MOS has an IQ larger than their boot size.  Which, if memory serves, seems a bit hypocritical coming from someone who got their panties in a knot over the perceived "abuse" of US Army Soldiers by some members who pointed out a few flaws in the Army's ability to put Soldiers AND their equipment required for sustained operations into a theater of operations on short notice.

Flame all you want!  You'll only die with carpal tunnel syndrome!

I seriously doubt that if he was staking out the cave like he said, he would be able to write a letter in the dark.  This letter is BS.  Why do people post this sort of dribble?

Nothing in this that we haven't learned from the  News.  Could you name three reporters who work for CNN, while sitting in Afghan for 2 months?  Fake

Bah!   Lets buy him a pizza anyway!

raf,

I really like the way you back tracked away from to

I see now.  At first, a Grunt, any Grunt, is far to intellectually challenged to write a coherent sentence.  But now, they are just too busy.  Thanks for setting me straight!

No axe to grind.  Only had a question, and you have answered it.  You could have at least spelled my name correctly.  But, FWIW, I think a Marine on a Recon mission is most likely to busy to write a letter or email from a OP/LP.  But then again, maybe this Devil Dog has exceptional time management skills and some high speed, low drag comm gear at his disposal.

You ever spent anytime in New Mexico
Nevada or Arizona.

Easily mid 90's during the day & low 40's
at night.