Duck!

The front page of the New York Times recently reported that U.S. commandos killed civilians during a raid into Syria. The thrust of the story was not the civilian dead (lamentably, civilian casualties stopped being news in 2001 when airstrikes commenced in Afghanistan). Rather, the story focused on the cross-border nature of the raid, likening it to increased “commando” operations in Pakistan. Not to demean the venerable NY Times, but cross-border commando ops in Syria aren’t news either. The military has been doing cross-border raids since we’ve been in Iraq. In fact, we’ve been doing it in the exact same spot as the most recent incident, namely where the Euphrates crosses from Syria in to Iraq.

Cross-border ops are no secret. Newsweek reported such operations in 2003, when elements from my unit chased suspected insurgents into Syria. Since it’s on the front page of the Times, it’s also no secret that U.S. commandos are venturing into Syria, and that their mission is to fight the influx of insurgents from Iraq into Syria.

Thus, because major publications have already blown the lid off any secrecy these missions may have had, I have no problem telling you about the foibles and follies of US commandos in Iraq:



On the base I lived on in far, far western Iraq, there was a road. This road was not quite a mile long, but it was straight, flat and well paved. It connected the two halves of the base, which themselves were essentially two clusters of concrete buildings separated by empty desert. There were 3 entrances to this road – one entrance at each end, and one near the middle.

On our base lived secret soldiers – the kind that have beards, wear baseball hats instead of helmets, and call themselves “Bear” and “Jackal” and “Dave.” Sometimes Bear and Dave and their compatriots would get nighttime deliveries, brought in by small planes. Think Cessnas – prop-driven, two-person, civilian-type aircraft. I can’t say for sure what was on those flights, but since I have a picture of one of my soldiers holding a Burger King Whopper – and there were no Burger Kings in Anbar province – you can guess what was usually on the plane. [FN 1]

Usually, when one of these burger-bearing birds was inbound, a call would go out on the radio telling all units to stay off the previously-mentioned road, because that is where the plane was going to land. Additionally, some secret soldiers would park their humvees at the road entrances, just to make sure no one went on the road. It was a good system all around.

However, secret soldiers, being secretive, stopped informing us lowly, non-special forces when their Whopper Express was inbound. Instead, they’d just send humvees out to block the road. Blocking the road was all fine and good, provided that all the entrances are blocked. You remember that there were 3 entrances to the road, right?

One night, in anticipation of some delicious cheesy burgers, America’s elitiest fighting force sent humvees out to close the road without telling anyone. They closed one end. They closed the other. They looked up in the sky and waited to Have It Their Way. No doubt they listened intently for the far-off drone of a propeller, because the plane would approach and land without lights - the friendly neighborhood islamofascists had taken to shooting at anything that flew, requiring lightless landings for aircraft. However, in their eagerness for fast-food goodies, the commandos forgot to close off the center entrance, which, as it happens, was where my soldiers accessed the road.

At about the same time as the incoming plane swooped in for its final approach, Sgt Hooper and Spc Kinsey [FN 2] hopped into a humvee, turned it on, put on the blackout drive lights [FN 3], and drove up to the road-cum-landing-strip. Spc Kinsey, the driver, looked left, then right, and saw nothing. Reasonably, he did not look up, likely having concluded that left and right were the only possibilities for approaching traffic. He stepped on the gas and pulled out onto the road.

Imagine Kinsey’s and Sgt Hooper’s surprise, then, when from the murky darkness in front them appeared two rubber tires, suspended in the air. They didn’t even have time to duck – the front landing gear bounced off the humvee hood, ripped through the center windshield, and tore off the canvas roof. Then, the plane landed safely! Even more unbelievable, Kinsey and Sgt Hooper’s heads were still attached. The landing gear had passed right in between them and converted the humvee to a drop-top, but had missed them completely. Other than scratches, bruises from the seatbelt, and the super-elevated heart-rate that one gets when the lizard part of one’s brain pumps out a quart of adrenaline, they were basically fine. It was basically a miracle that they were alive and that the plane had not flipped and crashed on impact.

Naturally, when a plane in flight collides with a humvee, it causes a commotion, as well as a number of investigations. The net result: no more night time flights bearing cheeseburgers for the super soldiers, and two soldiers had a pretty good story to call home with.

And that is how Spc. Kinsey and Sgt. Hooper became the only soldiers in Iraq to get run over by an airplane. The end.


FN 1: We don’t have universal health coverage, but gosh darn it, our special ops troops will have BK Broilers on demand.

FN 2: As you may have noticed, I do not use real names.

FN 3: Blackout drives are very low level lights on military vehicles that are barely visible to the naked eye, but shine like glorious Archangels if you wear night vision goggles.

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Andy P and the 21st Birthday Party

This story isn’t actually mine. My very good friend Pipes told it to me, and it details the closing hours of his brother Andy’s 21st Birthday. Here is pretty much how he told it, although the details have grown fuzzy with the passing of time:

“Ok, so I managed to get home to Minnesota for Andy’s 21st. He was never really much of a drinker, so we figured we’d just head out with some of his high school buddies and catch a few brew doggies. I had the Durango with me, so I was the driver. We all piled in, and hit a few bars.

Really nothing happened out at the bars, other than Andy was making drinks disappear. As fast as we lined ‘em up, he knocked ‘em down. And it was a wicked mix – Leinenkugel’s, PBR, Three Wise Men, Three Hicks and a Spic, Guinness I think. Bad news, especially ‘cause I don’t think Andy weighed one-fifty then. Anyway, I didn't drink, but Andy is pretty wrecked by the time we leave around midnight, and so were his buddies.



I get them all back to the car, and I get on the highway. Andy was in the front seat, and he’s just leaning back with his eyes closed. He kept shaking his head and moaning, “It’s hot, why is it so hot,” so I crack the window to give him a little air.

That doesn’t work at all, because as soon as the air hits him, he looks at me, doubles over, and goes “Stop, stop, I gotta puke, I gotta puke.”But I’m doing 70 in the fast lane, I can’t stop. I just roll down the window and try to push Andy’s face out of the car so he’ll at least puke outside.

That doesn’t work either, because Andy doesn’t really get his head out of the car. Instead, he just pukes this vile, black mess straight out the window. Dude, I’ve never seen anything like this – his puke stopped in mid-air, did this Matrix back-flip, and flew right back into Andy’s face.

By now, his buddies in the back are awake, and they both just go “Ohh, dude, that is fucking nasty.” Andy is plastered in this goop – it’s in his hair, all over his face, and down his shirt. Plus, Andy barely notices – he’s just sitting there trying to keep down the next batch. And it absolutely reeks.

I don’t have paper towels or anything, plus I’m still driving, so Andy just has to sit there until I pull over. I finally stop, and me and his friend get Andy out of the car. We get his shirt off, use it to mop him up, and then I just throw the shirt on the side of the road. The car still reeks, so I just get back on the road, get the two other guys back, and bring Andy home.

My mom was still up when we got back. I helped Andy out of the car, and no sooner get him in the front door than he spews again, right in front of my Mom. She screams, looks at me and says, “What did you do to him?” I’m like, “Me? Nothing, I’m stone sober.” She grabs Andy and points him up the stairs. “I’m getting your father,” she said. I’m like, Whatever, I’m 23, Dad can’t do much to me, and I grab some paper towels and cleanser to wash out my car.

It takes me forever to scrape all the goop out of my front seat, so by the time I come back in, my dad is up and waiting for me in the kitchen. His arms are crossed, he’s wearing a blue button-down oxford, and tighty whities, and he’s really mad. But I can’t not laugh at him.

“It’s not funny,” he said. “Andy might have alcohol poisoning. Why didn’t you take care of him?”

I can barely talk, but I’m like, “Dad, he puked everything up. He doesn’t have alcohol poisoning.”
“Well, he’s upstairs, and you’re waiting up with him to make sure he doesn’t die. Go upstairs and sit with your mother.” I have a 7 am flight, but I’m like, “Fine,” and head upstairs.

I get to Andy’s room, and he’s lying on his stomach, head hanging over a trashcan, and my mom is sitting in a chair next to him. As I go to sit, Andy heaves again, right into the trashcan. So, I guess he wasn’t quite empty yet. My Mom points at me and says, “This is your fault.” I was like, “My fault? He drank, not me.” Meanwhile, Andy is almost comatose, but he rolls onto his back and just kind of makes these big heavy sighs.

Then he starts to convulse again, and it looks like he’s about to upchuck right there on the bed. My mom says, “No, Andy, in the trashcan.” So he reaches over, grabs the trashcan, and holds it up over his head – and all the puke comes right down on his face.

At that point, even my mom couldn’t keep from laughing, and just said, “Oh, Andy.””

And that his how Andy puked on his own head twice in the same night. The end.

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Iraq Story #1

Yesterday I was helping my brother go through some of his old papers - college notebooks, newspaper clippings, class handouts, that sort of thing. He held up an old USA Today, which featured a full-page picture of a bearded and bedraggled Saddam Hussein under the headline "Captured!"

It reminded me of where I was when news of Saddam's capture first came out. I was a few hundred miles away, on a Forward Operating Base (FOB) near Iraq's border with Syria. Specifically, I was in a former rail-employee cafeteria that we had taken over and converted to a mess hall, and I was watching Armed Forces Network news on our 60" tv with a few dozen other soldiers. We had heard that Saddam had been caught, and that video would be shown on the news that night. Those of us who were free gathered to watch.

After much hype, the news broadcast showed the first grainy images of Saddam, with his grizzled hair and beard, undergoing a physical exam. It was the same footage you saw back in the States. The junior soldiers in the room hooted and whooped and clapped. I looked at one of the other officers with me and said, "Y'know, he could have driven right through one of our checkpoints, and I wouldn't have recognized him." He looked back at me, laughed, and said, "Yeah, and he probably did." And he was probably right. We watched the rest of the broadcast, and heard how Saddam had been found in a "spiderhole" not far from Tikrit. The program wrapped up, and we dispersed, wondering if this meant we could go home now.



My commander was not in the mess hall at the time. He was up at Squadron headquarters, and watched the broadcast there. When he got back to our area, he practically burst into the TOC (tactical operations center) and shouted "Spiderholes!" The two soldiers on radio watch and I looked up at him quizzically. "What?" I asked. "Spiderholes," he said, eyes wide and glittering with enthusiasm. "That's where they've been hiding."

A digression: my commander was not a smart man. He was usually nice, and had an "aw, shucks" manner, but his flatlining intellect earned him the nickname "The Rock With Lips" among the junior officers. We called him Rock for short, which he loved because he was an amateur boxer, and he thought we meant it like Rocky Balboa. I have dozens more dumb Rock stories, but back to the narrative:

Up until Rock's arrival, I had been looking forward to a quiet evening in the TOC. We had no missions planned, I had just made a pot of coffee (Peet's Holiday Blend - thanks, Mom) and turned up the heat (Iraq is cold in December), and I was hoping to see if Prof. Umbridge would catch Dumbledore's Army. I saw my humble plans disintegrate in Rock's eager smile - he had something on his mind, which meant I would have to do something, and it would probably be unpleasant and would certainly be dangerous.

"Who's hiding in spiderholes?" I asked. "Them," Rock said, gesturing westward at the nearby town. "All those hajjis. [FN 1] That's why we can't find 'em, they're hiding in spiderholes!" He smiled at us expectantly, clearly thinking we'd praise his insight - maybe a "Wow, sir, we're gonna get 'em for sure now. What's the plan?" Instead, we sat in uncomfortable silence. The soldiers had spent six months trying not to die as a result of Rock's "ideas," and I had designated myself as the keep-us-all-aliver-in-chief. None of us were pleased to hear spiderholes as another justification for kicking in Iraqis' doors and ripping up their yards with gigantic vehicles. But Rock just kept smiling, shifting his M-4 strap, and scratching his receding hairline.

"Whew, I don't know," I offered. "I mean, these houses that we hit aren't that big. And we usually have at least twenty or thirty guys, I think we'd have found one by now."

"Well, we've had 100,000 guys looking for Saddam, and it took us this long to find him," Rock said. True. 1 point to Mr. With Lips. "Ok," I said. "So you want me to just tell everyone to look for spiderholes the next time we go out?" I asked, hoping it would end there.

"Hell no!" Rock said. "I wanna go out right now, before they figure out we know about the spiderholes." "I don't really know about this," I said. "I don't think this is some widespread tactic that they're using. Wasn't it just, y'know, Saddam in a hole?"

"No way. We've been chasing these fuckers for months, and now we know where they're hiding." he said. "I wanta do a sweep tonight. The SCO [squadron commander] already signed off." [FN 2]. Well, that sealed it - can't argue with the colonel. "Ok, we better wake up First Sergeant," I said, trying not to look overly glum.

Three hours later, at something like 1:30 in the morning, I was standing next to my humvee, which was parked in the spacious yard of a farmhouse. I hopped up and down to keep warm. I looked up at my gunner, who was scanning the lonely stretch of road we'd come in on. "Hey Rob, any sign of 6?" I asked, referring to Rock's callsign. "No, sir, I don't see him. I think they're all over by the side of the house there," he said, pointing over his shoulder.

The radio beeped. "5, this is 7." [FN 3] It was First Sergeant. I grabbed the handset through the humvee's open window. "7, 5, go head," I answered. "Sir, you really need to get over here, over" he said. "What's up?" "Just get over here, you need to see this, and hurry, over." "Roger, on my way over...over." I tossed the hand mic back onto the front seat, told my driver where I was going, and headed over to First Sergeant's location.

I jogged quickly the 50 or so yards up a slight rise to the house, and then around the corner to the side yard. We had rolled in with the humvees in blackout, but now that the area was secured, there were a half-dozen flashlights gathered in an area about 10 yards from the farmhouse. I went over.

First Sergeant and Rock and a few NCOs were standing around, looking at a hole in the ground. Well I'll be, looks like Rock found a spiderhole. "Whadya got?" I asked. First Sergeant said, "Well, sir, [Rock] wants to jump in and see what's inside." I shined a light in the hole, which was smaller than a man-hole cover in diameter. I could just about see the bottom, and it looked brown, like everything else in Iraq.

I should note that the insurgents had discovered the American soldier's penchant for shiny things. In the early months of the insurgency, they'd put a shiny object on the side of the road. A humvee patrol would stop to investigate, and then get blown to smithereens after an insurgent remote detonated the bomb underneath the shiny object. I tell you this because by December 2003, the insurgents were become ever more adept at booby trapping, and the Rock was about the biggest booby you could trap.

"Did you check for booby traps?" I asked. "I tossed a couple of rocks in," the Rock said. "Nothing happened. I'm going in." He took off his body armor, grabbed his sidearm, and stood over the hole. First Sergeant, the NCOs and I backed away and stood behind First Sergeant's armored humvee. First Sergeant grabbed the radio and called for the medic. "We may need Doc up here," he told me, and I nodded.

Rock straddled the hole, then got down on one knee. Bracing himself with his hands on either side of the opening, he lowered his legs in. Shooting us one (last?) look, he grinned, dropped in and disappeared.

We tensed for the explosion.

No explosion. Instead, we heard "Ohhhh, shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!" We ran back to the hole, First Sergeant yelling for Doc to move his ass. We looked down, expecting to see Rock impaled on a punji stake or something equally nefarious. All I could see is him, about two feet below the surface, hands over his head, looking up for help.

"What is it?" First Sergeant shouted. "Shit!" Rock screamed. "I know it hurts," First Sergeant said. "Just tell me what's wrong, Doc is coming."

"No, the problem is shit," said Rock. "I'm standing in shit."

I clapped my hands over my face. Rock had not found a spiderhole. He found a rural family's outdoor toilet. It was 2 a.m. and freezing cold. I was in the middle of the Iraqi desert where angry men plotted my messy demise. And I could not stop laughing. Rock was thigh-deep in Iraqi farmer shit, and all was right with the world - once we got Rock back to base and burned his clothing.


[FN 1] I apologize for using "hajjis" in this context. The term should be an honorific to those devout Muslims who have made the hajj. The US military, in but one of its many culturally insensitive mistakes, corrupted it to mean Iraqis generally, and anti-American fighters or sympathizers specifically. I preferred "mooj" or "moojes" for the insurgents. That probably wasn't much better, but was the American shorthand for "mujahadeen," which at least was how the insurgents referred to themselves.

[FN 2] The SCO loved the Rock With Lips. Loved him. I cannot figure out why.

[FN 3] Callsigns vary from unit to unit, and there are different systems. On our internal radio network, or net, we used numbers and letters. I was 5, First Sergeant was 7, the TOC was X-ray. Now you know.

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My Government Bailout

I cannot wait for my bailout check to arrive in the mail. I expect it to be here any day. Any moment, in fact, because it is probably being couriered directly from the Treasury to my DC residence. I have a serious problem, and taxpayers need to fix it now, or the whole house of cards is coming down with me.

I need this bailout, you see, because I am just like the financial system. Three years ago, I made imprudent financial decisions. Like Wall Street investors sinking millions into real estate that was "guaranteed" to "appreciate," I pumped all my borrowed thousands into a similarly surefire investment - a law degree.



The problem is that I based my investment on what was essentially a lie. Just as Wall Street bet that housing prices would miraculously never come down, I bet that a law degree would actually make me rich. Why make this bet? My law school published in US News and World Report that its graduates were 96% employed at graduation, and making an average starting salary of $135,000. In 2005 dollars, no less. [FN 1] Well. Who wouldn't want a piece of that action?

As it turns out, housing prices don't defy gravity, and that $135,000 average wasn't even a little bit true. Now, despite the fact that I based my investment on the sunniest possible outcome, rather than sober "facts," I'm facing a credit crunch, rising costs, growing unemployment, decreasing income, and a tumbling stock market. Additionally, if I go down, the innumerable bartenders, baristas, video game purveyors, and cable tv providers that I support will go down too. The ripple effect will be completely immeasurable. Clearly, I cannot be allowed to fail. The government needs to buy up my bad debt and sell it to someone responsible - the Chinese. Then, having safely unloaded all that toxic debt onto the Chinese, the US government can default on its debt, simultaneously ruining the Chinese economy and ensuring American economic dominance for generations.

Bailout, please.

FN 1: $135,000 is roughly $1,000,000 in 2008, or 6 Euros.

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Introduction

Hello and welcome.

The blog you have on your screen is a collection of stories. At least, it will be a collection of stories, once I've written and posted them. I hope you find them entertaining. Read more...