Eric, I am as American as it gets. I am from a military family that goes back to 1757. My family pioneered Georgia in 1798. We have a family graveyard at Sly on the Brooks County line in the Big Oaks, sawgrass and big snakes, Spanish Moss and Confederate Flags on old porches and dogs with an infected ear.
When you see an old family in the American South you are looking at some of the hardest and meanest soldiers on earth. I am a professional soldier and have been one all my life. This country of America belongs to me personally.
I voted for George Bush. I will support George W and I will serve the interests of the United States to the gates of Hell.
I love war and I am good at it. I think Peace is nice but I dont like Peace personally because it is full of paperwork and cleaning details. I like fighting and I like what we did in Fallujah.
I was in Iraq for the drive on Baghdad.There is this town in Iraq called al-Hayy. There is a real modern freeway highway right north of the town. It was strategic. The overpass right outside of town was strategic. Big highway. We didnt know that Saddam wasnt going to come barreling down there with an Iraqi Division on that big modern highway. So we naturally had to take the place and hold it.
We came rolling in the Ist MarDIV my people late one night after taking a dump called Ash Sharrah the day before. We had A-10s ( Warthogs with Gatlings ) to back us up and we had long range artillery. We got out of our vehicles in the dark and strung a big range of razor blade concertina across the overpass and we dug in.
We could see the Warthogs setting fire to al-Hayy with Thermite bombs which were doing pretty airbursts over the town.
The RCT-1s were advancing on the city from the south and we were blocking the superhighway to the north. There was a canal on the west side of town and out there our convoys were bypassing everything and headed for Baghdad.
The Iraqis fired off a big salvo at us from a BM-21 but they didnt know exactly where we were and it just dug holes in the sand and we were expecting to nod off and get some Zs.
Which brings me to the guys we ///"islamed///". This was on March 31st. The rest of the battalion is spread out toward the Canal and over to another road called Route. 7 on the map. Go look it up. We set up our guns to cover the overpass.The ground is saturated with salts, there is a white crust over the mud. The place is barren big time. No crops in THIS crap. We got a town of 50,000 bottled up. No one goes in or out of here unless they pass under our guns. al-Hayy is two miles away. Screw em. All around us the moonlight on the salt flats.
Now that Italian commie bitch that got zapped, Smegma something, that means ****cheese in I-talian...comes to mind. She tried to run a roadblock at sixty miles an hour. Fat lot of good it did her.
The fedayeen in the town of al-Hayy decide they will try our roadblock out so they get a big Semi Tractor trailor and they come barreling down on us doing 70 mph just about midnight. The whole thing is full of jihadis wanting to die. Ya Allah.
We see the thing coming and we fire a burst of fifty calibre tracers to give them the message. Their choice. They dont HAVE to keep coming. But they are jihadis, not too bright. The lieutenant says, ///"light em up!///"
The Jihadis pour on the coal and you can hear the engine growling diesel. Here they come. The Jihadi is pulling on the air horn like a bugle. The lieutenant says it again real loud,///"LIGHT the F*cker UP!///" SO Everybody does it.
Under the ROE ANY vehicle that fails to stop at a roadblock is toast. You can demolish the twinkys. The whole platoon opens fire. We cant even slow this wacko down, hell we cant even shoot out his headlights. Five six xeconds of shot going out and he is still coming hell bent and be damned straight for the concertina and our slugs rattling the whole frame and still he keeps coming.
Five or six seconds is a LOT of time when you are shooting at a twenty plus ton truck bearing down on you full steam.
Horn blaring and picking up speed, tracers smacking into the thing...Barret 40mm hitting all around the thing lighting up the road and the moonlit night. Allah coming fo yo pink panty clad fanny. Yowsah!
Just before reaching the Concertina wire the vehicle jacknifes. Somebody managed to hit the driver. He is jello and his head is shot completely off inside the cab.The whole thing in there is painted with the guy and dripping.
A half dozen fedayeen jump out of the truck and are packing AKs. They cant see us in the dark but all of us are wearing night vision goggles. We cut them down cold as ice... methodically pumping three round bursts into each of them. Then as it gets quiet one Marine finally FINALLY shoots out the trucks headlights.
Later the lieutenant finds that the Barret jammed. Mark 19 piece of crap. It jams everytime we used it in a firefight. Beautiful thing, shoots 40 mike mike grenades like a squirt gun...except it jams a lot. What it needs is a lot of LSA lube and we didnt bring any with us to Iraq. Live and learn.
Anyway all the jihadis got ///"Islamed///". They are going to blow up like FAT black balloons by this time tomorrow when they start to rot.
So that is the new vernacular usage for snuffing fedayeen...they get ///"islamed///" If you mess with the US marines you get islam-ized. Is you been islamized?
You may wait for hours to make a kill. It is hunting pure and simple. You have the tools for hunting. You know your tools. You have the best tools that you can get. You think about how to improve your tools for killing. You have hours every day to silently watch and to think about the shot and about the tools and how to improve your chances of making that kill. You focus. You concentrate. You want to make the shot. You want to kill that Jihadi.
You watch and you wait. You want it.
You see movement. There. You watch. You monitor your breathing. You are patient.
You work day and night. You have laser sights that the Enemy can not see. You can see exactly where the bullet will hit. The shot is so accurate that you can cut a five millimeter steel wire at 300 yards. The laser makes it happen. The laser puts a small spark of red light exactly where the bullet will impact in the crosshairs of the scope.
The Jihadis never see it coming. They never hear the shot. Even in the dark you can see them from their body heat. They glow with their own body heat and the sight sees them in the cooler surroundings. Sometimes you can see them even hidden inside foliage or behind thin walls.
Sniping -- killing an enemy from long distance with one shot -- has become a significant tactic for Marines in this ’’Sunni Triangle" cities as three battalions skirmish daily with armed insurgents who can find cover among the buildings, walls, and trees.
If you see a man carrying a gun, that is a no-no. If you see someone breaking the curfew, that is a no-no. If you see someone entering the restricted perimeter especially in the dark, that is a big no-no. You don’t give them any warning...you kill them quietly. Tap tap and send them to Allah.
Marine sniper teams are spread in and around the Iraqi cities and villages, they are out every day and every night around the Marine military bases and positions., working night and day, using powerful scopes, thermal-imaging equipment, and modified bolt-action rifles that allow them to identify and target armed insurgents from 800 yards or more.
The snipers work in pairs and keep records while they work. One man spots and the other makes the kills. Tomorrow they may switch places. They practice security constantly and they vary their “hides”, the places where they wait to make their kills. They always move after they make a kill. The enemy has snipers also.
One of the very best games is when snipers hunt snipers. That is where you make a name for yourself. If you kill other snipers you know you are the best and so does everyone else.
The man who is a sniper is recruited by other snipers usually. In 100 men there are maybe six who make most of the kills. Six men in a hundred make 85% of the kills in a fighting unit. Snipers are always looking for those six men. Snipers want to talk to that man.
Of the six there will be one who might want to become a sniper. He can be asked to join the snipers and become a spotter. From there he may be given a chance to make a shot and score a kill. He can bust a cherry that way. That is what we call making that first confirmed and deliberate kill. “Busting a cherry.”
Every single man in the Sniper unit is a killer. It has to be that way. Some of them have killed several times. There are at present several men who have killed hundreds of times..deliberately, methodically. There are lots of men who have killed multiple times...dozens of times. It is what they do.
Weapons change, but the goal of the sniper remains the same: harass and intimidate the enemy, make him afraid to venture into the open, deny him the chance to rest and regroup.
The Marines say their snipers have killed hundreds of insurgents, although that figure alone does not accurately portray the significance of sniping. A sign on the wall of the sniper school at Camp Pendleton, Calif., displays a Chinese proverb: ’’Kill One Man, Terrorize a Thousand."
Unlike most Marines, the sniper sees the enemy before shooting. The enemy has a face.
Most combatants get only a glimpse of their enemies. The distance is too great, the firing too rapid. But the sniper, with time to set up the shot, sees the victims more clearly through a powerful scope: their faces, their eyes, the weapons in their hands. And their expression when the bullet hits ’’their center mass."
You have to have a combat mind-set. It isn’t for everyone.
I particularly remember a Palestinian who used to hide in a crowd of kids thinking he was safe there. This Palestinian hiding behind a crowd of children used to shoot at the Marine position and got to be annoying. So the platoon Gunny sergeant called in a specialist to deal with the Palestinian sniper. The Specialist was a Marine Sniper, an older man who specialized in killing other snipers.
The older man went out at night and made a “hide” in a pile of rubble. He waited there for two days very patiently for the Palestinian. He saw the man send the kids out first and then come out himself to make a few shots surrounded by the kids who thought he was “cool”.
The Specialist used a sound suppressor and made the shot at approximately 350 yards. None of the children were harmed. The bullet hit the Palestinian right in the center of his face, about the upper lip. His whole head vaporized in a red mist and the body went down like it had been sledgehammered.
The kids took a few seconds to react and then they all disappeared.
Game over.
Eric, I am the real McCoy. There will be Peace. I work out of the Embassy here in Islamabad...and do work to facilitate food and blankets and coal oil and stoves and tents for the Moslem earthquake refugees a hundred miles noth of here in the Azar on the Kashmir/ Pak border. It is mostly snowed in and blocked by landslides at between 12,000 and 16,000 feet in altitude.
Our helicopters cant get in at those altitudes very easily. Helicopters dont fly at those altitudes. We have to take it as high as we can and then pack it in by hand and human backs. I am an old man and I see that done. I make it across the snowline and I carry it on my back and supervise the men who do it all the hard way.
I am a lean old mountaineer from Georgia and I carry a shotgun and a pistol and I chew tobacco in the cold. And they will starve to death or freeze to death unless I see that they dont. And Allah wont save them or the snotty nosed kids in those hungry tents, I will.
But Moslems call me an Infidel. And I have given up sniping and I am doing other work, but I havent forgotten who Moslems love. They love Osama. And I am going to see these people survive the winter and beat the sides of the tents so the snow doesnt pile up and collapse them from the weight. And they can crap and piss in buckets and empty it outside in the snow and drink the snow if they dont pour the bucket of crap in it first.
And I dont spit tobacco inside anyones tent. I go outside in the cold. And I am called an Infidel and I am cursed by all the friends of Allah.
And that mother and the baby get another quilt and a new tin stove. Try not to burn the tent down, Fatimah, you dumb bint.
