Runt's Rant Page

Chiggers, Sand Fleas and Scorpions!

From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan in 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. It's a 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, ol buddy. 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.

Recon Marine in Afghanistan

Semper Fi

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

share".

Send this to ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS so that people here will really know what

is going on over there.-

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.'