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've said it before and Ill 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.  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.  Its what they do.  Its 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.
Fucking cavemen with AK 47's.

Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.  I'm freezing my dick 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.  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.

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 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, USMC