The only thing I have to say is. Three Marines died in combat and have you heard anything about it on the news? Of course not but a child molester who happens to be an idol to some and labled the king of pop dies and that is all you hear about. Remember what kinda of person he was not just his songs. Now think of what kinda people the Marines were. Yea no contest to who will be getting into the pearly white gates if you belive in it. All I have to say is what the fuck!

Fast Lane

Ok so everyone knows how horrible traffic on our nation’s roads and highways can be. We try to avoid I-95 and 395’s beltway in D.C. at any given cost during rush hour. We plan our day knowing the best and worse times to travel. Well here, it is so easy.

There are no specific times of the day or night that you can gauge when rush hour will hit. Nor can you ever predict what you will see or travel thru in your travels to your destination. Here driving in the city is like survival of the fittest. You have to be willing to take some risks and possibly unsafe chances to move along in traffic. When I say traffic, I am not meaning what you see in the states. Typical traffic in the states consist of, SUVs, cars, trucks, and 18wheelers. Here it’s a totally different ball game. There are no lanes marked by nice little white lines. There are no speed limits or even traffic rules. You can and it’s done countless times a day by everyone go from the far left lane and turn right moving across four “lanes” of traffic cutting everyone off to make a right hand turn and vice versa. Which you can imagine causes extreme traffic jams and irritation. What you see on the roads here vary from the favorite car on the road here the Toyota corolla to what they call a Jinga truck. There are even these little things called tuc tucs that are insane. That is only the vehicles. Now let’s talk about the hundreds of people, the donkeys, the donkey carts, and the guy with no legs walking on his hands, the street vendors pushing their carts. I’m telling you it’s insane. Yes, you have to drive thru all of the said things on the road. There are no sidewalks here. Everyone and everything is on the road.

Oh! How could I forget the French? They are the worse. When the French military roles thru town watch out, I mean move as far away from them as possible. You hear of stories of the U.S. military shooting at cars or Black water guys doing the same to keep possible SVBIEDs away to keep the convoy safe. Well no rumor you have ever heard can compare to the French. I don’t know if it is their policy or what but they roll like they are scared to death. You look at them you may get shot at. For instance a couple days ago the French were rolling by the lead gunner in the convoy has his pistol drawn and in the air in one hand and in the other a video camera. I never saw if he shot anything but….

Any ways diving here is something that takes time, lots of patience, and experience. I am going to try to get some pictures and post them soon. There is no way I would ever be able to explain this to the masses where you can actually imagine what I am saying.

And people at home wonder why I have so many traffic tickets….

Meaningless Life?

So I have been thinking if this topic I am about to approach is appropriate for me to post. I’m not sure if the average person wants to hears or even know how meaningless someone’s life is in these countries. For the masses of our world we value every living thing. When someone dies of natural causes we are upset, when someone is killed we are not only upset but also vengeful.

Some feel when we pass on it’s the circle of life. We are born, and then contribute to the world and once we pass on, we go back to the earth and become part of it. I’m sure there is more to the belief of circle of life but let’s be honest, I don’t really care. In life there is death and vice versa. In my eyes, when you are dead your dead, however there are supposed to be respectful ways of handling death and the dealings of the dead.   In the world, that I live in when I am overseas this is not always the case. You are exposed to all things horrid and intolerable. You will see things better left in Hollywood horror movies. For example, have you ever seen dogs eating on swelled bodies of the dead, bodies burned beyond anything you can imagine in your nightmares, or how about someone being dismembered, still screaming until they die of blood lost? Wait I know for sure you have at least heard of the people who have had their heads cut off on TV by terrorists.

You may be saying to yourself well that is horrific. Did those things really transpire? Then you say to yourself but it is war, shocking and ghastly circumstances happen. This is true, war is not an innocent event, many evil and immoral and even wicked acts take place. So these things happen. Well let’s take a look at something else.  Yesterday my partner and I were driving through the middle of town, when we came across a crowd starting to form. Due to many reasons, this raised our level of alertness. Arriving closer to the scene of turmoil was a local man pulling a child from underneath his car. The boy was around the age of nine and was unconscious. I cannot say if he was alive or dead but what took place after is more important.

Now mind you we are in the middle of the city. There are people all around, police within ten feet of the incident and a crowd of on watchers. Once the man pulls the child from the under belly of the car he brings him to the side of the street and throws the body down. At this point, I am looking toward the cops as if they are going to do something but its business as usual and no one bats an eye. The kid never gets up and the guy walks away.

When an American here kills someone for whatever reason, there is kind of a fee that is paid to the family. I will not go into the how much or how this is negotiated but it happens. The family comes to whomever and demands blood money and is upset beyond belief but once the money is handed over no harm any fowl and everyone goes on with their normal lives.

I just thought people would think this is interesting….

Granloaeater2’s first attempt to enlighten the unknowing people

For the last 4 years I have had to listen to liberal granola eating faggotts preach about former President Bush. How bad a job, the bad decisioons, mis use of funds, bla bla bla.  Some of that is true, no one’s perfect. But when it came to the security of our country, He did his job as Commander and Chief! When the Towers Fell, he cleaned house and took the fight to the enemy, IN HIS OWN HOUSE!  Sadam threatened the US with Biological and chemical warfare! We found the bunkers, but it never made the news, BIG SUPRISE! I remember having 20cc of adrenelin and something next to my pro mask, over my mop suit. Once again Bush cleaned house, we rocked Iraq! Alot of what really happpens doesn’t make the news, only the bad, and the soldiers suffer because of it.  Next time you hear someone say they support the soldiers but not the war, Punch them dead in the face. Not supporting either one has the same affect, less funds for soldiers. Fewer UNARMORED Hummvees, no air support, no fuel, Mre’s run out. They are the ones keeping the wolves at bay. So the fight doesn’t come to the US, and it will!  Iv’e been coming to the Middle East since I was 19, some of the best times of my life. Great memories, only ones I can remember these day’s. I barely remember high school, but I can tell my part in almost every mission in the last 7 years. I might not agree with everything our government does, but atleast I did my part! If you haven’t been there done and done that, shut up! Your just adding to the problem!

“To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.”

With everything that goes on in our lives and dealing with the stresses of being deployed. One of the hardest things for us to cope with is being away from home. As we go through our daily chores of being deployed, we seldom think of what maybe going on at home. We try to avoid thinking of our loved ones while we are in the unsafe areas of these war torn areas we currently call home. The reasoning behind this is there are enough emotions & thoughts going in and out of our heads that somehow we have to keep a clear and level-headed mind so we can catch any change in our surroundings. Any time we allow ourselves to think of anything other than the mission at hand, could mean life or death, for the entire team or the individual.  With the severity of the consequences always present in the back of our heads, we push on until we get back to base. Not to say sometimes, no matter how professional or experienced the operator may be, thoughts of home sometime slip in. For us, the dealings of home, is different from the rest. Our normal lives, as we know them stop the minute we step on the plane for work, till the minute we step back on our country’s soil we are different people. From the time, we leave our homes and loved ones we start to think of everything we are going to miss. For some it may be their child’s birthday or even first steps. For others it may be missing a concert or waking up next to your girlfriend in the morning. We think about these things while we are gone because not only we miss our lives but also our world stops. While the day-to-day chores and lives of our loved ones and friends continue at home, ours do not. For the most part, we are starved for information from home. That phone call we get and the email or txt is more than that to us. It’s our life we left behind and it is what keeps us connected to the normality of our real lives we left. When we don’t hear from our friends, family, and loved ones for a certain amount of time, it starts to irate us not because of the fact we haven’t heard from them but the fact we start to feel out of sight, out of mind. Which in most cases it’s not the case at all but since we have nothing else, it feels that way to us. In our deployed lives, we miss a lot of events and time with people. We sometimes over compensate when we get home. Whether it is us spoiling our loved ones with gifts or trying to spend every waking moment with them we are over compensating. This in the long run can hurt us more than help us. We have to remember we were not the only ones dealing with being away. Others too have gotten use to their own schedules and life styles. I am not saying they didn’t miss us it’s just they have a new routine and we are now are going to be put into it. Overall, the worse thing for us is being separated from our friends and family, and for some of us our girlfriends and friends are the ones that keep us in touch with the world. This is interesting since we have chosen this profession ourselves and continually deploy. Question is how long can one put up with this…

How it is

As I sit here reading over polls and surveys of the current third world country I am in, I start to wonder yet again. How is it possible for this county to have an election that is not corrupted?  First and foremost, it is not my job under any circumstances to read or be involved in the election process or its politics.  I just believe however, it is important for me to have an understanding of everything that is going on in the area that I am working in.  This way when I am dealing with the local populace I can better understand their worries, wants, beliefs, and temptations. With a better understanding, I can then sway or even manipulate a situation easier to my favor. For the most part dealing with people here is an everlasting game of smoke and mirrors.  It helps if you show them respect, for instance taking your shoes off when entering their homes or even dirt huts but with a snap of a finger turn your passiveness into assertiveness and dominate any situation by any means.  Thankfully, the latter is rarely needed.  So back to my current question… How can a country that has such deep issues have an election that is not corrupted?  I’ll give you a brief idea of what I am talking about.  If these people are to have an election there will only be a small percentage of people who will cast their ballots on their own.  For the most part this country is illiterate, with most of the educated persons in the major cities. From my experience in these third world countries, this is how it is going to work, and does work on day-to-day bases.  Take a farmer or any other “blue collar worker” who may or may not be able to read or write. He is going to be told what to do.  An elder, a religious leader, a war lord, or even a terrorist group will come up to this person and tell him to vote for whomever.  Most likely he will not be paid or anything, but he will be expected to do what he is told.  And he will for whatever reason, fear, respect, religious ties, or the slim chance of status.  If this person cannot read or write it will go as far as telling him which number the person they want is on the ballot.  I am not even going to touch on what possibly happens at polling locations with no western over sight.  Why is it like this?   Well for the most part the lower class even to the middle class can care less about anything that doesn’t have to do with their household or local areas.  The average person’s worries here are putting food on the table for his family, having another child to help with chores whatever they may be, hoping his wife doesn’t die in child birth since it will be too expensive to buy another and being a good Muslim.  Oh, and those people who are telling the commoners who and what to vote for, ya they are being paid off.  Look at any poll taken here a vast majority have had to pay a bribe or a “tax” to get what they needed.  It happens here every day.   So how do you deal with corruption on such a broad scale? Can you?  Can there be an election with no corruption? I say no not at this time….  Why I worry or even think about these things I really have no clue.  I guess it s just I have spent so much of my life here I want something good to come out of it all and when I see these things its upsetting.

First Thoughts

Down another day and you would think I would be in a better mood but I’m not. Confronting the idiocrasies’ of this place and its people, irritates me to the end of my limits. Which then shortens my overall tolerance for any unforeseen situations. I believe it has been 8 years of Western influence and these derelicts cannot even comprehend or sustain the basics of just general hygiene. So how can they manage an election?