From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan

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.  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 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.

 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 

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.  Cavemen with AK47′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, Bizarre.  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.

You wanna help?  Buy Bonds America.

Saucy Jack

Baltimore “Unit One… Signal 13″

Baltimore Sun via YellowBrix

January 03, 2009

BALTIMORE, MD – Baltimore police dispatchers put out a call just after midnight yesterday that captured everyone’s attention: Unit One … Signal 13.

In other words, the police commissioner needs help – fast.

The city’s top cop, Frederick H. Bealefeld III, was alone in the basement of a Southwest Baltimore rowhouse holding a suspect at gunpoint.

A member of his executive protection unit, Peter Sullivan, was upstairs searching the house for a second man with a gun.

“I was worried about him,” Bealefeld said yesterday, referring to his fellow officer. “I’m sure he was worried about me.”

A hands-on leader, Bealefeld is known to ride around the city and has chased down the occasional suspect.

But ordinarily, at midnight on New Year’s Eve, Baltimore’s police commissioner is downtown overseeing officers assigned to the Inner Harbor during the annual fireworks display. The department bulks up its ranks, canceling all leaves so there are enough officers on hand to help with the crowds and an anticipated spike in crime because of the city’s tradition of celebratory gunfire.

With the fireworks postponed this year because of high winds, Bealefeld took advantage of the extra 1,100 officers on duty and sent them throughout the city. That meant 1,500 officers working the streets, up from about 400 on a typical night.

“You either send people home and tell people come back tomorrow, or you make use of those resources,” he said. “The overwhelming consensus was let’s make use of the resources we already had programmed and let’s put them in the neighborhoods.”

The result: In addition to the pair of guns Bealefeld seized, city officers took 46 other firearms between midnight and 3 a.m. They arrested 44 suspects on gun charges, police said. But even with the extra officers on the street, one city man was shot in East Baltimore about 1 a.m. yesterday and was on life support yesterday evening. This morning, police said the man has died.

Bealefeld participated in the patrols and initially drove with his two-member protection detail and his communications director around east-side neighborhoods.

Satisfied with coverage there, they headed to the Bridgeview-Greenlawn community on the west side, where a man had shot five people on Sunday.

“We figured that people would be on edge,” he said. “It is not rocket science. We do this every day.”

As midnight approached, Bealefeld heard gunfire.

The group drove toward it, heading to Catherine Street near Bon Secours Hospital.

Bealefeld and Sullivan jumped from the car. “We’re looking west up the alley,” Bealefeld said. “A guy walked out and started shooting. You could see the muzzle flash. You know it is a gun, a big gun.”

The men ducked into the basement of a rowhouse in the 2500 block of W. Fairmount Ave., with Bealefeld and Sullivan in pursuit.

Inside, Bealefeld and Sullivan encountered a roomful of people. The police commissioner spotted one of the suspects there and held him downstairs. Sullivan went upstairs to find the other.

“For a little minute, we were in there by ourselves,” Bealefeld said.

The second member of the commissioner’s protection unit, Annie Miller, had called for backup. She was outside and did not know which rowhouse the commissioner had entered.

Bealefeld got on the radio, too, and called in the address for the rowhouse. “I was on the radio saying Unit One,” he said.

He then added the code that set the whole force on edge: “Signal 13.”

So many cars responded to the distress call that Bealefeld worried about protection in other parts of the city, causing him to have mixed feelings about the incident.

“This is the professional dilemma of being the police commissioner and being out on the street. I was grateful for the backup. But we have other cops in the city. We have to be covering them too.”

In the end, police arrested Davon Rogers, 23, and Devin Rogers, 18. Each was charged with illegally firing a gun in the city, records show. And officers seized two sawed-off shotguns, a Remington and a Mossberg, police said.

Shortly afterward, Bealefeld fielded an angry phone call from his wife, who had become worried when he did not call her at midnight on New Year’s Eve as he normally does.

Her first question was whether he was wearing a bullet-resistant vest. He told her he was.

Why should you and I buy American?
This is not another patriotic statement without foundation, it just makes sense.

Simply for peace of mind. A label that says “Made in USA” is proof of unsurpassed quality, it says “this is the best there is” Such items are coveted everywhere around the world, but why not in our own country anymore?

In fact, our raw materials and our manufacturing methods remain far superior to the competition. So why settle for anything else? Our future depends on the choices we make now. Companies that once stood as American icons to the eyes of the world are now exporting the manufacturing of goods previously made here in the USA. What is happening to us? Every time we settle for an import we cheat a fellow American out of work. Big corporations are planning on very short term investments. By exporting their business, they save on labor and materials but sacrifice quality. When Americans go broke who will by the imports? Certainly not the people who produce them. A strong economy makes a strong country, it is very simple: if person A can work, person A does not have to resort to crime to feed his family.As more and more jobs go overseas, we can expect a rise in violent crimes. Our country will be made of a very few rich people and a lot of very poor people, just like a third world country.

The objective here is not to name a certain nation or to point out specific companies.( just go to any large retailer, pick up anything under $50.00 and read the label) Furthermore, we are not urging anybody to boycott anything that is not made in the USA. The truth is,competition is healthy ,it forces us to improve ,and sometimes there is no going around it: Some things are simply not made here at all. But for two items of the same nature, please demand “Made in USA” if you re tired of living in a “disposable” world.
There are two forms of terrorism. The one that we are unfortunately familiar with targets our way of life to weaken our economy. The other kind has a longer lasting effect, because of its slow nature it is almost invisible. This type of terrorism targets our economy directly. How can we compete with governments that offer 500% savings on labor and materials? Human rights are not respected in those countries. Privately owned companies do not exist. Our money is used to build armies or fund a space program. if we do not want to sell our way of life, we need to wake up and fight back. We need to work harder and whenever possible WE NEED TO BUY AMERICAN!