Bile XXXIX, version I (Just Fucking Read It!)

Here's the post that I think probably represents best the whole Unclean Philosophy. No frills, just Unclean being Unclean:

• In the world I see - you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You'll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You'll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you'll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.
  -Tyler Durden
  
  We are almost there, by God. Almost to the point where this huge, malignant zit pops in an orgasmic purge of puss and infected blood. Call it a metaphorical cleansing of the societal hair folicles. Call it a bullimic purge of the excess of modern society. Or call it what it is, the end of a self-destructive cycle of laziness and ignorance. It won’t matter. The end result will be the rapid decline of a society that once prided itself as the Light and the Hope of the modern age. An alternative to the self-destruction inherent in Marxism. An alternative to the lack of individuality inherent in Fascism.
  
  What we’ve evolved into is an example of the bastardized ideals and half-assed devotion to the principles that founded this Republic. Oh sure, we’ve seen universal suffrage, gender and racial equality all come about without a major revolution. Moreover, we’ve weathered the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Japanese Empire, and the Soviet Empire. Plus, we’ve achieved monetary hegemony over the economic distribution of oil since the early 1970s. Yet, none of those things have guaranteed our continued existence. For what will defeat us will not be our lack of a powerful Navy, a two front war, or an unsound fiscal investment to keep up in an arms race. What will defeat us is our inability to identify who our enemy is.
  
  Now, contrary to what the news would have you think, our enemy is not the current President of the United States. Nor is it the inability of Brittney Spears to conduct herself as if she were older than 18 years of age. This problem has nothing to do with Madonna’s adoption, Simon’s displeasure with the hirsuite individual singing in front of him on American Idol, nor whether or not Brad Pitt is morally justified in banging, and subsequently marrying, Angelina Jolie.
  
  The enemy is our expectations. We have allowed ourselves to be stuck here, bemoaning our lack of security, our credit rating, and the relative prospects of sexual gratification.
  
  What we have not considered is the cost of our freedom to do these things and explore these paths. Do they include some form of sacrifice? Will I need to risk anything in the maintenance of this self-autonomy? Is it possible that I might be inconvenienced? Be unpopular? Will I have to tell the ignorant assholes around me things that they might not wish to hear?
  
  Yes. You may. In fact, this world does not resemble the world in which you grew up. We all grew up assuming that this would all be a rerun of the Eisenhower era, that we would all assume jobs where the money would come easy as long as we worked honestly, while the military kept the barbarian hordes off the gates and outta the market. Where our children would grow up fearless, and our golden years would be spent in reflection on the net gain that we had factored into human existence…
  
  …But, that ain’t happening, is it? The barbarian hordes blew up the fuckin’ trade center, for Chrissake, and are probably making inroads into blowing up our local International Airport right now as we read this. The Soviet God of Communal prosperity has been defeated and replaced with the Mohammedan God of Universal supplication to the Sharia. The difference is that the Commies just wanted us to be communist…the Mohammedans want us to all die as infidels right fucking now.
  
  And in the midst of all of that, all of this dire posturing, are the American people…
  
  …sitting for an evening worried that the current venture in Iraq isn’t progressing fast enough. Worried that somebody else’s kid might enlist and get killed over there. Worried that we’re spending too many tax dollars on the war. Worried that we may be over there for another one or…[gasp!]…two years. Concerned that the idiot on TV, that is cowering at Howie Mandel’s feet, might pick the $1,000,000 case out of the bevy of shapely young spokesmodels…
  
  Yet, the truth of it is this: We have forgotten what it means to sacrifice. We have forgotten what it means to truly do without. We have forgotten what it means to be hungry. And the resulting lack of perspective has left us ripe for conquering by those who can remember such things. It happened to the Athenians, the Romans, and the English.
  
  So, what shall we do? Where do we regain that perspective of privation of years past? Do we shed the trappings of the elite, where each family is assured of a home, heat, food, and a dry place to sleep? Can we expect the masses to shed their dependency of comfort? Can we ask our children to suffer, simply because it will, indeed, build character?
  
  No, we are past that. We are at a point in history where a child can get expelled in school for fighting. Physical violence has been deemed anti-social and any who display the tendency are immediately ostrasized from the herd. And thus the herd grows weak. Because of the lack of trial. Because no displays of physical courage are allowed. Because men are now made by people who were not willing to take a punch from anyone, for anything, no matter how dire the situation.
  
  And we find ourselves dissatisfied by the lack of courage present in our society. We find ourselves longing for the days of our youths when we were willing to fight over a slight on our good name. We wish our sons had that sense of manly pride, that priceless sense of honor. We wish in vain.
  
  Fact is, our sons have been taken from us. Our daughters thrown under the expedient bus of political correctness, and multi-culturalism. We watched in silence as it happened, first in academia, then in the mass media, and finally in our children’s schools. And we are forced, like A Clockwork Orange, to watch helpless as our offspring are isolated and killed by peoples more determined than us, because we were too weak to stand up and teach them the right way to perceive happiness and fight for what they believed. They were shown that anger was wrong, and the lack of righteous anger will be their undoing. They were shown that violence was evil. And the inability to kill those who would take their freedom will be their undoing. They were told to tolerate all cultures and beliefs. And the inability to fight for what they believe in will be their undoing…
  
  And it all comes about by the decisions that we have made the past twenty years. And it all comes about by the selfishness and softness of a generation who has known no hardship. And it all comes about by the ignorance of the true soul of liberty.
  
  The soul of liberty is violence, and the willingness to do violence to any who may take it from ye. You must mistrust those who want to make you “safe”, because “relative safety” and “freedom” are diametric opposites.
  
  God willing, there will come a counter to the softness that has pervaded. The “Jackass” phenomenon is a misguided reflection of that entire concept. Boys kicking the shit out of each other is a time-honored concept borne of times when strength and courage were requirements for one to be recognized by the tribe as a Man in fact and title. Nowadays, a driver’s license is all that is required. So, we must raise our boys to be hard, irrespective of the tears that they may shed…for they will thank us later.
  
  “Rub some dirt on it, boy.”
  
  “Walk it off.”
  
  “That’s a GOOD scar there, son.”
  
  Bottom line is this: We must make up for the lack of our own society by remaking it to our own liking…one dude at a time. The problems that beset this nation are a result of fifty years of malaise and inattention. We must spend our time upon this earth in an attempt to right the ship, create strong, independent thinkers among our own progeny, and accepting nothing less than that same willingness to sacrifice from our very selves. Because the end game that we imagined when we watched “WarGames” with Matthew Broderick has come before us in the guise of a turban-wearing, Koran-quoting, Mohammedan fascist motherfucker who wants you, me, our wives, and our kids to perish from this earth tomorrow…because he believes it is God’s Will. These psychotic assholes will not get weaker in our lifetime, only stronger because of the inaction by the baby-boomer-worthless-fucking-idiots who have been running the country for the last nineteen years. And the only thing that will stand between those psychotic Mohammedan assholes and this Republic, here in about twenty years, is the ability of our sons to go and kill them. And the ability of our sons and daughters to make decisions regarding immigration. And the ability of our children to have the perspective to understand that the value of their individual liberty is in direct preportion to their willingness to sacrifice themselves in the name of that liberty.
  
  Only then, when we have taught these lessons to our children, made these sacrifices, taken into account the true price of our Republic, only then may we hold our oaths to be complete. That we have supported the Constitution, that we have defended it. That we well and faithfully executed the duties of the offices that we entered…no matter when.
  
  Only then, my friends, may we have peace.
  
  Viva Res Publica,
  Unclean

Bile XXXIX...the lost Bile

I was searching for some shit earlier, and found that, as I renumbered all the Bile, I had left one out...and probably one of my favorites. This is from December of 2006, and is something that I'm proud of:

• It was 0600 as I boarded the plane. Laura did this on purpose, and it shows just how astonishingly competent that she truly is. I mean, come the fuck on. If she gets me a flight out of McLaren in Vegas at any time past 0900 and I’m either in a strip club or on the casino floor until 0400 night prior. This way, she KNOWS I’ll be in bed at the steamingly shitty hotel that I booked for myself by 2300 at the latest.
  
  The hotel. That’s a fucking chapter all of its own. It is an establishment known as The Wild West Gambling Hall. It’s off the strip, barely, and rightly so. It is cheaper than death and seedier than my prom date. I checked in about 2000 and was interested to see that the woman checking me: 1) was the reason for the weight capacity signs in elevators; and 2) had AT LEAST ten pieces of metal inserted into her head. Piercing, my ass, this lady had lost a fight with a fucking staple gun.
  
  Anywho, as I checked in, I asked the rotund pin-cushion where the closest place that I could find a bottle was. She directed me across the gambling floor to the sundries vendor. As I walked across the floor, I was laughing my ass off…OH MY GOD. Where in the fuck did they get these people from? Everyone in that joint, (and that is a PERFECT term for that place), was well past their warranty. HIGH MILEAGE. Truckers, young burnouts, druggies, inveterate gamblers with too much aggression and absolutely zero judgment, and dealers assigned by name to this place from Sauron himself. These fucking dealers made the ones at the Remo look like Mother Teresa. Most had degenerated to the point where they only existed in a spectral fashion and you could only see them if you looked to one side and picked up motion out of your periphery. I truly think it was like gamblers’ hell. Fuck up enough in the big casinos and they send you here. To make an incredibly long story short, I purchased a bottle and a six pack from a woman, A WOMAN, who was a spot-on match for Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstien, and went back to my room.
  
  [Twelve hours later] So there I was, on a plane bound for Washington D.C., by way of Baltimore/Washington International. I had a stop somewhere in-between that I can’t bring to mind, except for the fact that the bartender at the Chili’s airport bar wore a “Kerry/Edwards 2004” button on his apron, and that I can never go back there. But that’s not important. What is important is that it occurred to me right then, on the plane, as we entered the atmosphere at several hundred miles per hour on a Friday morning that I would not be expected to operate heavy equipment or a motor vehicle until sometime Sunday evening. Just then, on cue, the stewardess asked me if I would care for a beverage.
  
  “Yes,” I respond, “I’ll have a bloody Mary. Keep ‘em coming.”
  
  And while I suspected it at the time, this was the beginning of one of the most legendary benders of all time.
  
  For my Birthday, you see, Laura had purchased me air travel to D.C. in order to meet with a buncha former Marines, respected executives, and a few other friends of Michael C Cochran, male prostitute. The Group, which was formed by a number of officers from the finest Division in the Marine Corps back in the late 90’s (1st Marine Division, By God), was formerly known as SCAM-D (Southern California Association of Marines-Drunken…or some shit, I honestly can’t remember. And don’t fill up my inbox pissed about it either, we don’t even go by that name anymore anyhow.) This august body had met yearly for the past four or five years at such places as Vegas, New Orleans, Toronto (or Montreal…I can’t keep them straight. It’s Canada, so who the fuck cares.), and Chicago, in order to drink, have a respectable meal, and enjoy watching Eric Martin morph into a drunken pig. In 2003, they wandered into Chicago during the end of one of the few pennant races that the Cubby Bears have been in over the past 25 years. I was in Career level school (fat fucking good it did me) in Fort Sill, Oklahoma when Mike called me from Wrigley hours before the Cubs would clinch the NL Central for the first time since World War II, while I watched on television. I really wanted to attend one of these….things.
  
  So, this year Mike talked to the boss. Laura, happy at the prospect of having me around the house forever, decided to get me the fuck outta the house for the first time since I went on terminal leave and sent me to see St. Michael of Ann Arbor, et al.
  
  After the stewardess delivered the Bloody Mary to me at 0732 on Friday morning, I did not draw another sober breath for the next sixty hours. I did not put down my glass for the next 48 hours. I wandered through taxi cabs, shopping malls, city streets, and hotel lobbies with a drink in my hand. The only person to actually correct me was a young waitress in a sports bar in Old Town, and she just wanted me to order something from the bar. (After drinking the rest of the can of Bud Light that I was carrying, in a single draught, I politely apologized and asked for a Sam Adams.)
  
  The fact that I’m still alive, and not in jail or working in some kitchen is a tribute to Mike’s circumspection, Eric Martin’s guile, and my own skills at talking the Devil into setting himself on fire.
  
  But I’ll get to all that as we go. Tonight I want to personally thank the editorial board from the Los Angeles Times, because they sent me. The fuck Off.
  
  Ladies and Gentlemen, it ain’t the fucking destination, it’s the goddamn trip. Stand the fuck by.
  
  BILEVol. XXXIXAn Honest Appraisal and Counter-Insurgency
  
  1) “Somebody get Elanor Roosevelt’s biographer on the phone…” I was at the office the other day, checking out the editorial tripe pushed out like so much fecal discharge from the respected media sources, when something got my attention. The Los Angeles Times had actually done something intelligent for a change. They went to academia, you see, and asked various respected muck-a-mucks how they thought various historical individuals would handle the problem of Iraq. They asked these individuals who were smart about Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Julius Caesar, and Genghis Khan to write 1000-1500 words on this topic. It was interesting, I will grant you that, and I don’t doubt the conclusions that those individuals drew. All entries were well thought out, logical, and realistic. I enjoyed reading these pieces.
  
  (I won’t put in a link here because I caught it on The Early Bird, which is a DoD news compendium and is accessible only through DoD validation. However, I encourage reading these pieces. Go to the Times online and check ‘em out.)
  
  But as “The Night Fox” said in Ocean’s Twelve: “I thought about that for like a really long time.” And the more I thought about it, the more pissed off I became. We see everyday in the media that we are losing this war in Iraq. Everyfuckingday. We hear and see and read everyday about what a travesty the Bush administration has been since the outset of hostilities. We’ve all heard the arguments: “The WMD was the false basis for initial hostilities”…”We should have concentrated on al Queda and left Sadaam alone”…”This is a quagmire that will hang around Bush’s neck like Vietnam has been hung about the neck of LBJ”…”GWB has gutted the constitution unlike any other war-time president before him”. I mean, for the love of Christ, Gerald Ford is telling the world that Bush shouldn’t be in Iraq, and that guy’s fucking dead. Enough already. STOP IT.
  
  It won’t play.
  
  Answer me a question real quick. When was the last time President Bush closed down a meeting of a State legislature anywhere in the country? Lincoln did it. In Maryland. In 1861.
  
  How ‘bout this: When was the last time we interred hundreds of thousands of Muslims in concentration camp under the justification that we couldn’t verify whether or not they were spies? FDR did it.
  
  Okay, when was the last time you heard someone arrested and sent to jail for ten years for “making a speech that obstructed recruiting” for military service? Woodrow Wilson signed the Espionage Act of 1917 into law that had just that effect.
  
  Where am I going with this, you ask? Well, it’s just this: We are at war with a people who want to kill you, and me, and everyone we know, as soon as they can. They are called Islamofascists and they are out there, right fucking now, planning something that will result in the violent death of Americans somewhere. They don’t have the sexy Hitlerian mustaches, and they don’t occupy a position of power other than what our media grants them. They are criminals, no better or worse than drug dealers or street thugs, but by virtue of the popularity granted them by CNN and FoxNews and every other Goddamn media outlet, they are granted a status that has been amplified by many orders of magnitude. In light of what they have done in the past, however, and what they MIGHT be capable of now, their causes have been given de facto legitimacy. And what has this President done in response to this? Has he interred an entire demographic? Has any government, local or federal, arrested someone for obstructing the recruitment of those who might fight for the Republic? Fuck No.

We’re fighting a “light” war. Like light beer, it blows. We want the Mohammedan Fascists to die, but don’t wish to inconvenience anyone in the process. We demand success in Iraq, but we bitch and whine every time someone acts in an aggressive manner that results in unfortunate, but necessary, collateral casualties. Can any of you imagine Genghis Khan passing an order that forbids entry into a mosque in a country that he was invading? How ‘bout Abe Lincoln? That fuckin’ guy burned down an entire region of his own country to win a war, for the love of God. (“I want a crow that flies over the Shenandoah valley to bring his own rations”)
How ‘bout this, I was listening to that idiot fucking lawyer that FoxNews employs as a legal analyst the other day bitching about the fact that some Imam got thrown off a plane after vocally, and loudly, proclaiming al-Queda and bin-Laden as the saviors of Islam. In 1942, two large corn-fed individuals would’ve beaten that motherfucker within an inch of his life and been acquitted of it. Today, we hear from the conservatives in the media that throwing that ass-clown off a plane was unconstitutional. Whatthemotherfuck?

Think back to the national pulse on 12 September 2001. We wanted blood. We would not stand for the attack on our people, for the slaughtering of innocents, for the degradation of our Republic. No fucking way. What has happened since then? Are we asleep, again? Once, we had the courage of our convictions. Are those convictions any less worthy of our courage five years later? Three months after that attack, a man named Steven de Beste wrote a very good piece about the fact that our courage was commonly underestimated around the world, but they were wrong to think that we would lay down after 9/11:

“The historical pattern is that people who become comfortable also become complacent and decadent. It's happened many times in the past, and it's happened now in Europe. I think it was an easy mistake to assume it had also happened to us.
Indeed, since 9/11 there have been many in the world who have demonstrated that they still don't understand our national spirit, or understand that at the core we have not become European. In fact, when we began to demonstrate that fact, many tried to convince us we should, to no avail.”
Later in that same article, that I read hours after reading the Los Angeles Times pieces, I found this quote:

“About ten years ago I remember exchanging email with someone in New Zealand who made a comment to the effect that the US had once been willing to engage in serious war and to make real sacrifices to win, but no longer was because its people had changed. I responded, "Don't bet on it." I assured him rather coldly that we had not changed in that way, and that the fire and steel were still within us. I told him that if he had not seen any evidence of it recently, that was only because there wasn't anything going on we thought was that important. I told him that it took a great deal to rouse us and to cause us to commit to full-scale war. But if we were sufficiently provoked or if the issues were sufficiently important to us, we are just as willing to fight today as our predecessors had ever been in times past.”

Now, it seems to me that the only person in a position of leadership, who is in the public sector today, who continues to exemplify these hardened, realistic, strong characteristics is the very man who is in the position to fight this war. The current President of the United States, when compared with other war-time Presidents (to include his old man) is doing a fantastic job. Economically, we enjoy prosperity like no other nation in the world. (One in which the poorest among us must suffer with dial-up ISPs) Since 9/11, when was the last successful attack on American soil by the Mohammedan horde? In Iraq, we have lost fewer men than in any protracted war that we have ever fought. Like Jerry mentioned to me a minute ago, even when we pass 3000 killed in action, we will still be short, in the fourth year of this war (1,460 days) of the total casualties suffered IN ONE DAY on 6 June 1944. Is this war any less vital than that one? Is this cause not worthy of that sacrifice? I’ve tortured myself with the answer to that. I have come to the conclusion that this sacrifice is necessary. We have to stop these fuckers there, in Iraq, now. The alternative is that our word means nothing in the international community, and that we will forever be assailed by those who see no evidence that we are willing to act in a decisive manner to defend our own way of life. If we should shitcan this President and the ideals that he has professed since 2003, then we will never be trusted by anyone else…ever.

I will admit to doubting this course. Any who know me and have spoken with me about the domestic policy carried out by this administration knows that I have doubted it. I was wrong to have done so. We need to be more vigilant and more unaccepting of those who would have us crawling senselessly about the floor like a dog. We are in a fight, and we must continue that fight until we win. Because, if we quit, those who wish to destroy us will not, and we will just end up doing this again at the expense of something more dear than we wish to sacrifice. An Iraqi Democracy is optimal. Sadaam is dead and that is a check in the block. However, the need to kill Mohammedan Fascists is upon us, and we should never shrink from that challenge. Until they are all dead. Period.

2) “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic…” One other aspect of the Los Angeles Times editorials was the myopic treatment of this counter-insurgency. Genghis Khan and Julius Caesar both fought “small wars” in ways that we are forbidden from reproducing. They countenanced absolutely no resistance. When they found it, they killed any and all who were involved…and their families….and their communities…and anybody who knew them. There was no collateral damage estimate performed, they just fucking killed people. At some point, the people stopped resisting the inevitable.

Now, I’m not professing a widespread repeat of My Lai 4. The wanton destruction of innocents only inflames the populace in its resistance of our occupation. What I am advocating is that we stop treating the accidental death of every innocent Iraqi as an indictment of the failed policy of Donald fucking Rumsfeld. (People, get the word out today, the atrocities at Abu Gharib were the result of ineffective leadership at the prison, and were in no way reflective of the leadership of a guy in an office 10,000 miles away in Washington D.C.) Men with weapons, in close proximity to other men with weapons who wish to kill them, present a significant threat to anyone in the area. The fact of the matter is that the Marines in Iraq don’t want to kill any who don’t manifestly deserve it anymore than Amnesty International. True fact. Because they are the ones who have to suffer the secondary and tertiary effects of that incident. Specifically, no Battalion Commander is going into Iraq with the mindset that killing a bunch of non-combatants is a neutral position. They are judged by their ability to neutralize enemy activity, and they cannot do so by being so heavy handed that they run around killing innocents. So they will, by virtue of their job, do what needs to be done. Problem is, the Battalion Commander in Iraq is second guessed by so many people, for so many reasons, that we have, in effect, rendered him ineffective by half. He still has battlespace, and he’ll still do what he can to stabilize it, but the second-guessing that has taken place since 2004 for every tactical action, individual action, or decision made or missed has been oppressive to such an extreme that I cannot adequately express it. (Ask me sometimes why the Regimental commander must clear indirect fires and air strikes) Also, whether we like it or not, that DIRECTLY translates to the squad leader through his company commander. So what happens, in effect, is that each squad leader out there right fucking now is as worried about getting fired/arrested as he is worried about enemy action. True fucking fact. Our constant attention to the ten year old, hair-lipped, blind Iraqi kid killed in the air strike that also killed Zarqawi is not helping that young Sergeant.

It is a tragedy. I am sorry that it happens. I cannot give a shit.

To do so loses sight of one over-arching aspect of warfare: mission accomplishment. We have to get shit right in that country. This Nth degree of attention paid to every single fucking collateral casualty has resulted in not only reduced effectiveness by our forces, but is completely misunderstood by those whom we would shepard into the fucking light. I have read at least ten articles over the last eighteen months in which Iraqi leaders were damn near begging for us to be MORE aggressive. They understand force, they are our allies, they know what works with their countrymen, they are more concerned about killing the bad guys than they are worried about us harming innocents.

Great bit that ties in here. I have been treated, by virtue of my last boss, to innumerable lectures of past counter-insurgencies that stretched well past the point of me wishing stab myself in the eye-socket. After a while, some of it sunk in, and I realized something. Those most successful counter-insurgencies did not give a flying fuck who was harmed in the prosecution of the fight at-hand. Ashurbanipal worried about non-combatant casualties? Whatthefuckever.

We don’t need to go that far, but we need to go further than we are currently, and that is a direct function of the outrage that we show here, on the sidelines, when a wedding party gets smoked in the process of killing the better part of a hundred fuckers that are putting IEDs in on us. Everyone needs to trust the fact that the fucker that we spent the better part of 20 years training might actually know what the fuck he’s doing.

Another solution, my dear friends, lies within our very own history:

In the late 19th century, Texas was in the middle of what we call “sectarian violence” today. On the one side, you had people who had driven cattle a thousand miles over iffy terrain to market, using every means at their disposal to water and care for those cattle in the process for almost three generations. On the other side, you had people who bought and paid for their very own propertie (nod to Cartman) and wished to enclose that propertie, to include water sources, with barbed wire purchased and installed at great expense. So those who drove cattle would need the water and would cut any wire in their way to water. Those who put up the fences would defend their property. Violence ensued. People died in a ditch. Up comes a man in a dark coat with a badge. He’s a Texas Ranger sent to that area to quell the violence. He pulls the muck-a-mucks from both parties in and gives them a variation of the following speech:

“Look, I don’t give a good Goddamn who is right or who is wrong in this. I don’t care who started it. I don’t care who died yesterday, and what act is planned for tonight that will avenge that individual. THIS STOPS NOW. The next person involved in this dispute, who fires a round in anger, gets a bullet in the head. Right then, or as soon as I can contrive it. No Judge, no trial. Dead. Then, I’m gonna come get one of you, whichever side started it, and I’ll kill you. Quite possibly both of you. I don’t care if you didn’t order it. And I don’t care if someone acted without your authority. I will kill you anyway. Questions? No? Okay. Good evening, boys.”

This is the way. Aggressive. Decisive. Infuckingdescriminate. Leave the cultural shit to the FAO. This is what they respect. This is what they will obey. I’ve sat at the table with these assholes, and if I had the latitude to give the above speech, with a Marine Sniper behind me with an M40A1, and execute the “or else” clause when it all turned to shit, then 2/7’s AO in the city of Fallujah woulda been like Lubbock inside of a week.

If we do this theater wide, and make good on it, then shit will stop now.

One fuckin’ riot, one fuckin’ Ranger...

Fin,
Unclean

Bile XLIX: Friendship Day Bile!

I found out earlier today that today is International Friendship Day. I'm fucking serious. Please allow me to quote the little placard that earlier today I found proclaiming this day :

"International Friendship Day is celebrated on the first Sunday of August worldwide. Friendship Day is an opportunity to remember the important contribution friends make in our lives and to let your friends know how much you value and appreciate their friendship."

[Please note, I realize it's the 10th, and last Sunday was the first one in August. I'm guessing it comes after the first full week. Work with me here.]

Well, seeing as how you who get this qualify as the closest thing I'll ever have to someone who will claim to at LEAST know me, much less call me friend, I guess this is just fuckin' perfect. Consider yourselves appropriately greeted/appreciated/acknowledged on this auspicious day.

And kiss my fuckin' ass.

Friends, it's like the olive in your martini, the rocks in your scotch, it's...


BILE
Volume XLIX
Immigration, the Nanny State, and a Return of Apathy

1) "Mi llamo es siete de ocho. Resistance if futile. Prepare to be assimilated..." This is getting tiresome. We've spent a couple of hundred years building a common identity. We've got a national character that is among the most distinguished on the planet. Unique. Unmistakable. We have built a republic after repelling a dictatorship. We have grown over the years to become the most powerful state that the world has ever seen. In the past, people flocked to our cities, hoping to become recognized as a native, hoping to share in the wealth, both fiscal and moral, that our republic had come to represent.

Then it all changed. Immigrants now flock to my republic looking for a handout. Unlike previous generations, however, they will not assimilate to the local culture. They maintain their often repugnant traditions. They make no effort to learn the language. They believe that their existence in the republic is supposed to merit the rest of us taking care of them, just because they travelled a couple of hundred miles, and crossed a fuckin' river. They take jobs that we will no longer debase ourselves to perform. Their children suffuse the educational system with mounting problems concerning communication, because no teacher can understand a word that comes outta their fuckin' mouth, much less frame information that will educate them in any appreciable way. These people have apparently reproduced so successfully in their homeland that it has become imperative that they seek greener pastures in my homeland.

Enough already, by God. I've had it. The state of Texas needs to pass a limit on the number of New Yorkers that are allowed to move into The Republic annually. Seriously. You can't swing a dead cat around three times in downtown Dallas without hitting a dozen or so city boys from Nueva York obsessed with finding a decent curb side parking spot, a loaf of marbled rye bread, and a coffee shop. The urban sprawl of New York city has apparently reached past the Red River.

Everything should have limits. Anything can be taken to an extreme. Aristotle taught us that. It's time to tell this like it is. Texas needs to put up border control checkpoints on both the Red River and the Sabine.

Quick, someone tell me. How many baseball games on ESPN, on Wednesday and Sunday nights since April, have featured teams that did not call New York home? Two. A Cubs/Cardinals game, and a Boston/Anaheim game. That's it.

The other day, I tuned into a Rangers game that was being played in The Ballpark At Arlington. It featured the loathed Yankees in opposition. Imagine my consternation when Jeter came to the plate amid thunderous applause. The one man who has witnessed the demise of the once-proud squad of the late 90's, who has caused the Rangers more pain than a team ERA over 5.00, and who calls Alex Rodriguez friend. This man was cheered at The Ballpark in Arlington.

That was when it hit me. We've pegged the fuckin' fun meter back home in Texas. Seriously, folks. Pretty soon we'll start electing people like Hillary and Mario Cuomo to positions of power, and we'll let those idiots implement stupid shit like rent control and gun control, and then we'll inherit all of that other silly liberal shit that has been adopted up north. All our football teams will start to lose with incredible regularity. (Yes, yes. I realize the Giants won the Bowl last year...but name one really good college football team from New York. Just one. Besides, how many New York High School Football programs have prompted the writing of a book, two movies, AND a television series? (Odessa Permian: "Friday Night Lights" and "Varsity Blues".) The prosecution rests.)

New York city is the stereotype of urbanization. And the urbanization of this culture is the main reason for it's undoing, people. People who don't live in close proximity to ten gazillion other people are actually more polite, they respect one another's property more, and are generally more in touch with their feral roots. The roots that keep a man in tune with what is important...his liberty and not his safety.

Hold on a minute. That might be where I wanted to go. Hold on just a second.

Safety v. Liberty...

Rural v. Urban...

It occured to me the other day, as I explained to my progeny-- who were momentarily sated at the dinner table after one of my fantastic meals-- that feral animals were cunning, tough, and adaptive enough to ensure their survival. Anyone who has hunted wild turkey can attest to this. They're incredibly savvy birds, given to honed instinct and an impressive tactical cunning. Whereas their domesticated cousins are as fantastically stupid and become fatally scared for little reason. My sainted mother loves to tell a story about when she was growing up, and there was a pen of domesticated turkeys on her father's farm. One Sunday morning, a fox came close to the pen, smelling easy prey. Before said predator could figure out a way into the pen, the turkeys inside flipped the fuck out and started running about madly. Several of those doomed creatures ran into the fence headlong, hard enough to kill themselves. That night, the new local preacher came to the Stiles' house for dinner. My sainted Grandmother prepared one of the aforementioned turkeys. Following a sumptuous repast that featured this kamikaze turkey, my uncle Dale (who was 10 years old at the time) pushed back from the table, rubbing his belly in satiation. "Momma," he said, "that turkey that the fox killed was very good..." The silence was deafening.

People, that is where we are headed. Think about what most urban folk would do in response to any threat, be it a man with a gun or a hurricane: "Oh my fucking God! Somebody call the police/government!"

Wrong answer. You're better taking care of yourself rather than relying on a master, and most people, who don't live near fifteen gajillion people, know this. A threatening man with a gun should be shot, by God, or at least pistol whipped. If a natural disaster should hit, you get out there and fix what must be fixed yourself, because John Law's got other shit to worry about.

A little-reported story back in 2005 was that the rural town of Beaumont, Texas (90 miles west of New Orleans) was hit by a Cat 5 hurricane roughly a month after Katrina hit New Orleans. Betcha didn't hear about that, didja? Know why? Because the vast majority of that rural folk had been preparing for that eventuality for years. They had stocks of canned food, boats, fresh water, you name it. Those feral animals took care of themselves and their neighbors. They refused to be victims. Men and Women without masters. Masters of the own destiny. Strong. Capable. Undaunted. The media, therefore, had no story. So you never heard about it.

Meanwhile, three years later, you see shit in the daily news about the people in New Orleans waiting for FEMA to settle up. Not a word from Beaumont. Nary a one.

Feral v. Domesticated.

Now, Texas doesn't have anything like a patent on feralism. By no means. I see it out here in the desert on a daily basis. It's in Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota, Tennessee...you name it. The true spirit of this nation is in its rurality. New Yorkers and other East Coasters can claim that they are the center of the universe, and those idiots waving to the camera on the street behind the Today show set will cause people to think so. But just so you and I know better, let's say it right here and right now. The spirit of this republic is not Boston, New York, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, or Chicago. It is Twentynine Palms, California, Andrews, Texas, DeQueen, Arkansas, and any other shitsplat town you can name. The people there are tough, self-sufficient, and ask for nothing from anyone. This used to be a concept that all men were familiar with, before half the Americans became domesticated and decided to trade their liberty for safety. They deserve neither.

When the bill of entropy comes paid...and it will...stay out of the major cities, people. New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago will be like Lord of the Flies. Those people ain't gotta clue.

2) "I've decided that you're too stupid to make decisions. Therefore, we will all act exactly the same..." Oh my fucking God. Check this shit out. I'll give ya a sec, as I pause to freshen my bourbon...

Ya ready?

Okay

People, in case you missed the news--oh, say, since 2003--we're nose to nose with a people who want to end our way of life. They want to kill you, and me, and every single fucking person we know. Dead. And your Secretary of the Navy is worried that I might burn a square or throw in a dip somewhere in proximity to an individual that might breathe and cause that person an early death sometime in the next fifty fucking years, due to that incidental contact.

Perspective time: I spent the majority of last week in uniform, helping Andy with controlling live fire ranges. While doing so, I breathed in copious amounts of HC smoke from smoke grenades that were used in training to obscure a simulated enemy position by Marines who were breaching an obstacle. I also breathed in fumes from a 50 lb. bangalore torpedo that breached an obstacle on Range 400. I've sucked down smoke from shots in Iraq that were as large as 75,000 lbs worth of Net Explosive Weight. Someone, anyone, please tell me how semi-daily exposure to my second-hand smoke is going to top that? Even better, explain to me how my smokeless tobacco is a threat to anybody in any respect? Someone, please, tell me how this is more dangerous than, say, a piece of lead out of the AK-74 of that Mohammedan who is shooting at Marines and Sailors right now, or the shrapnel from an artillery projectile buried on the side of the road that is ignited next to a Coalition patrol. You can't, because it isn't. And the moment of joy that is derived by that Marine and/or Sailor who is, admittedly, addicted to that nicotine, when he inhales the morning's first cigarette, or the momentary satisfaction from the buzz from that first dip of Copenhagen, outweighs your attempt to make me a better domesticated animal. You fuckin' asshole.

Besides, you're trying to be my Ma. Stop it. She smokes too, and will absolutely kick your fucking ass.

Next. You Nancy motherfuckers. We've given you the airplanes. We've given you every enclosed space in the ENTIRE state of California, and several other states/municipalities. Keep your nanny-state-worried hands off the out of doors. That shit belongs to US, by God. Note that passage in the link above, about "no smoking within 50 feet from building entrances". Fuck you. Does the smell of cigarettes bother you, sweetie? Then don't come out my door then, ya pussy. I could give a flying fuck at a rolling donut if you can smell my burning cigarette as you approach an exit. You'll live. Trust me.

This is another bit closely related to the above diatribe about feral v. domesticated. People, me burning a fucking square is not going to kill you...ever. The assholes who have decided that it will were paid 19 kazillion dollars by the anti-smoking lobby to decide that very conclusion. Beware of scientists who are funded by fascists with ginormous fucking checkbooks.

But as Tyler says "On a long enough time line, the life expectancy for everyone turns to zero." We can occupy our days and months worrying about the rat feces in our Campbell's soup, or the urine content in our Lobster Bisque, but all of that worrying is for naught. You live your life, you do what you gotta do, you die. Nothing in this world or the next will stop the fact that, when it's your time, you're gonna fuckin' die. Nothing. Not your relative consumption of cholesterol, nicotine, radium, or Carbon Monoxide. You're still gonna fuckin' die. I've heard all of these arguments about responsible consumption. Fuck you and everyone who resembles you. My personal satisfaction with the fact that, right now as I'm typing this, I'm smoking a Camel Light and drinking a shot of Basil Hayden's Bourbon with a Sam Adams behind him, while you're in bed at 2251 on a Sunday following a meal of tofu with soybean curd and a light salad with no dressing, cannot be overstated. I will live a satisfying life. You and I will die at approximately the same time, with your asshole so tight that it could fuse sub-atomic particles, while I loose this mortal coil with a smile on my fuckin' face.

I've got a moving 25 ft. "Authorized Smoking Section" sign that follows me everywhere I go. If you don't like it, don't come and see me. I'll survive the disappointment. Trust me.

3) "This guy is rude and uncouth!" No shit, sweetheart. There is a reason why they call me "Unclean". The following is a brief compendium of shit that is but worthless weight on the train of society, that I could not care less about, if you were to set me on fire and force me to watch...

--The Dust Pollution in Yucca Valley, CA. Sarah heard this on the radio earlier and came bouncing into the kitchen a couple of hours ago laughing at the absurdity. Folks, Sarah is 14. She heard that Yucca Valley, CA is concerned about the air pollution resulting from aerated dust that results from people driving on dirt roads. They have, apparently, made billboards admonishing folks to slow down as they move around on dirt roads in order to keep air pollution under control.

As Sarah pointed out. "Dad, it's DIRT"
As I said at the very same time, "It's fucking DIRT"

My friends, could one of you please call me and explain just why in the blue fuck should I worry that the air may be polluted with...dirt? I remain unconcerned. Enough so that I went four-wheeling in Sean's truck down Morongo Road today, as I went on-base to get groceries...

--The 2008 Summer Olympics sob stories. Look, I'm in awe of these athletes. They have come through hell and back to even be considered for the competitions that they have entered. That fact is enough, by God. I don't need a twenty minute diatribe about the fact that each and every one of them had to overcome poverty/sexual assault/drunk driving/appendix cancer/asthma/drug addiction/dead relatives. I just hope that they achieve the excellence that they've hoped for. Life is life, people. It is often hard, and we've all got our own rancorous stories of heartbreak and defeat. Every single athlete that is/has competed in this Olympiad has made an adult decision to do so, despite or in contravention to whatever might be in their best long-term best interests. I applaud each and every one of them...categorically. Please stop telling me about their dead pets and ailing aunts...thank you.

4) Epilogue. If anyone wishes to reach me, I can be found between "what the fuck?" and "Jesus, who comes up with this shit?" at TTECG, training these battalions to go and fight. In the evenings, I type this shit. While I will never say "No" to an Exercise Force, I will inevitably deride that operations officer with a layer of sarcasm. Sorry, I gotta be me.

So good to see you once again

I thought that you were hiding from me.

And you thought that I had run away.

Chasing a trail of smoke and reason.

Prying open my third eye
-Tool

Unclean

Bile XLVIII, All-Star Bile

We're here in real time now, people...stand the fuck by.

As I sit here, on this fine Sunday afternoon in July, the torrential desert downpour having washed the top layer of sand from my front and back yards into the street, the humidity in the high 80s, the temp in the low 90s, I reflect on just how quickly this year has passed. It seems that the older I become, the more quickly the world seems to move around me. Of course, in my present job at TTECG, this may be a function of the fact that my job deals with 28 day training periods, which discreetly pile one-on-top-of-the-other, to the point where I measure time not in days, or weeks, or months, but in overlapping training cycles. It disturbs me slightly that I'm ceasing to think of Fridays as such, but identify them as either "Training Day 1", "Training Day 15", or "The Friday before the Final Exercise". (It really bothered me the day before yesterday, when I only realized that a Friday was upon me after a woman who served me coffee wished me a "good weekend".) All I know is that I woke up this morning and found that we're midway through an election year, and the only candidate who is talking about change is one who wants to eviscerate this entire nation in the midst of a shooting war against Radical Mohammedism (note: not all change is good, please inform any idiots who think so, thank you).

Which leaves me with the only satisfactory segue into the main argument: Anytime the mass media wants to sell you anything, whether it be a tenet of political philosophy, a manner of aligning your priorities as a human being, or a candidate for the office of the President of the United States, that product should be questioned intensely...with a microscope...because they are doing so for reasons that do not line up with your long term self interest or the interests of this nation. Yes, we have become that shortsighted as a people. The media is what we've allowed it to become. They sell us things that they think we want to buy, tell us things that they think we want to hear, and try to keep us from challenging the status quo because that would leave them bereft of currency. They wish us to consume, and we do so, as complacent and compliant as Hindu Cows. As Tyler said:

"We're consumers. We're by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty -- these things don't concern me. What concerns me is celebrity magazines, television with five hundred channels, some guy's name on my underwear. Rogaine, Olestra, Martha Stewart. Fuck Martha Stewart. Martha's polishing the brass on the Titanic. It's all going down, man! So fuck off with your sofa units and your green stripe patterns."

I say never be complete. I say stop being perfect. I say let's evolve and let the chips fall where they may."

But that's me, I could be wrong, maybe it's a terrible tragedy."

My good friends, this is your mid-July wake-up call. It's your...

BILE
Volume XLVIII
All Star Break Bile

1) "I'd like to say that I'm for change. Yeah, the change that you have in your pocket." It is with little in the way of reservation that I report that the people who want to be your next president are idiots. McCain has been adding to the size and intrusiveness of the federal government since he left Hanoi, and Barrack Hussein wants to change everything by basically repealing the entire constitution. My youngest son, Daniel, asked me the other day if I would vote for McCain this election, since he knew how opposed I was to Barrack Hussein. I told him, "No, Daniel". He asked me why I would not do so. I replied that, since 1984, the American people had been forced to choose from the lesser of two evils at each and every turn. There seemed to be no individual to take up the standard of Reagan, there was no "good" choice to be made. So we did what responsible adults do: when forced to choose between a bad choice and a clearly harmful choice, we'll generally opt for the bad choice.

"The lesser of two evils."

I told Daniel that I'm thirty-fuckin'-seven years old, and I'm tired of making bad choices. In the whole spectre of "the lesser of two evils", I will never vote for evil again. Any evil. Never again. I expect none of you to follow me in this folly, for it is one of principle. Principle counts for shit these days, so most will vote out of habit for whatever asshole is standing atop their respective party banner. Original thought has taken a holiday.

My friends, we are at a complete standstill in this nation. From Bush I, to Clinton, to Bush II, to whomever comes next. The man who enters into that office has sold his soul to get there, and spends the next 4-8 years making it up to the people who paid cash money for him to be president. Each and every one of us sees the millions of dollars that is spent in the campaigning for the office of the Presidency, and none of us, not one of us questions where it comes from. I haven't donated, and I'm quite certain that many of you haven't either. Which might cause one to wonder just where in the hell this money is coming from.

We all know, deep down, where it is coming from. It is coming from those whose long term self interests align with whatever asshole they are giving money to. To enumerate the cause is to split hairs, and is irrelevant to my argument. Wealthy interests give a mind boggling amount of cash to whomever they think will mitigate towards their long term goals. I have no problem with this, actually. It is the way of things. And ever it shall be.

But consider for a moment how it used to be in the beginning of the Republic. When Jefferson ran against Adams in 1796, the money involved in becoming a legitimate candidate was not a factor. Those two gentlemen were both men of means, with knowledge and experience in the administration of the country. However, their relative ability to pump money into the local newspapers was not the central tenet of their campaigns, as it is today. Jefferson and Adams stood for alternative things: Adams for a strong Federal Government, Jefferson for the overarching rights of the States relative to the whims of the Federal Government. The winner of that campaign, John Adams, did not ever leave his hometown of Quincy, Mass. to campaign. It was a contest of ideals, of principle, and the principles of the many prevailed. There was no talk of what John Adams had done as an undergrad, whether or not he had fought in the revolutionary war, or whether he had inhaled or ingested anything that might have, at the time, been thought intemperate. The campaign was about direction. Whether the nation wanted to adopt the Federalist ideals of Adams or the Statist views of Jefferson. This was the world at the outset of the Republic. We should be ashamed at the state of what it has become, by God. Truly, and I'm really serious here, I could give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut that Barrack Hussein has been going to a church run by the black version of David Duke. That does not matter to me, people. What I care about is what he intends for my country, not what classes he took in high-school. So far, he has said that he wants to treat with the nations that we have been fighting intermittently since 2004 (Iran and Syria). I don't like that. So far, he has said that he wants a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. That scares the hell out of me.

Now, McCain is better only measured fractionally, in my opinion. He has, during his tenure in the Sentate, managed to augment the size and intrusiveness of the Federal Government, as has every other Republican except Ron Paul, Phil Gramm, Dick Armey, Newt Gengrich, and Ronald Reagan since the Sox lost the Series in '86. As I see it, the only difference between McCain and Barrack Hussein, regarding the distribution of wealth, is that Barrack wants to redistribute it to the welfare state, and McCain wants to redistribute it to the banking system to prop up a system that is failing utterly under the Federal Reserve. That too scares the hell out of me.

And so we find ourselves, yet again, with the choice between two evils. People, I'm done voting for evil. Lesser or Greater. Done. Finished. I will not, for the rest of my life, vote for evil ever again. I will vote for Ron Paul this election, regardless of whether or not my vote contributes to the election of either one of the alternative assholes. People, we need to wake up. And this is how it happens. Me talking to you, you talking to another. At some point, the voting for evil, Lesser or Greater, becomes moot. Whether the solution is of the Tyler Durden model, or that more mild version that is the result of mass unrest as a result of ineffective policy matters not. What matters is that we start talking amongst ourselves, leading those who would be swayed, to that place where the framers intended...a nation free. Not guaranteeing a litany of "rights" to such irrelevancies as health care, employment, housing, education, or economic dependence. But only three wonderful things:

Life

Liberty

Property.

Because once you've got those three, and nothing else, you've got the motherfucker licked, by God.

2) "I've lost my car keys. Quick, someone call the FBI". I was about to go off on a two-hundred word diatribe about Barrack Hussein's campaign, followed by another two-hundred words about McCain's. Then, while I was researching on McCain's website, I found the nugget that ties the two...

Both of these assholes think that they need to take care of me.

Now, this is a result of expectations that are societal and hearken back to the depression, but they are as unfounded now as they have been since before the Second World War. People, neither you nor I need the Federal Government to make our lives better. We don't. The Federal Government has managed to fuck up every task assigned to it since its inception. It cannot succeed in making your life better for you. It cannot take care of you in any appreciable way. At all.

Only you can do that, my friend.

True that. I was once an undergrad, with a live-in girl friend. She had a child. My sainted mother, perceiving the likelihood that I might not finish school and be wonderfully successful made the following argument:
"Larry, I will not continue to help you pay for school if you stay with her."

There it is, no? I told my sainted mother to keep her money, got a school loan, and here I am twenty years later. Laura and I did it our way, and Joel is in his Sophomore year in college with a 4.0 G.P.A....

The lesson here is this, my friends. The minute you accept a dime from someone else, be it a complete stranger or your own mother, that person will expect you to conduct yourself in a way that they expect and approve of. Human nature. Look it up.

As is the motif here in this little missive, let us look out there and read what is being promised you in this election year, with corresponding interpretations based on reality.

Ready?

Exercise.

From the McCain Website: "John McCain's HOME Plan Will Keep 200,000 To 400,000 Families From Losing Their Homes. McCain is calling for aggressive federal action to help keep 200,000 to 400,000 families from losing their homes. That plan has many of the elements of a proposal by Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., and Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., requiring participating lenders to forgive part of the loan principal and then write a new loan that would be backed by the federal government through the Federal Housing Administration."

How It Works: Individuals pick up a form at any Post Office or download the form over the Internet and apply for a HOME loan. The FHA HOME Office certifies that the individual is qualified, and contacts the individual's mortgage servicer. The mortgage servicer writes down and retires the existing loan, which is replaced by an FHA guaranteed HOME loan from a lender."

Translated: First, who the fuck is picking up the tab on the defaulted interest? Huh? "Forgive"? One can only forgive if one has something in store. Banks ain't got "forgiveness" stacked in their vaults. They have cash in there. And if you've defaulted, whether McCain's your President or not, you're fucked, pal. You've entered into a federal beauracracy that involves something like judgement with regards to whether you deserve the relief. You don't. Unless you've got video footage handy of being set on fire by Nazgul while defending Frodo at Weathertop with a baseball bat and a can of mace, you're fucked nine ways to Sunday. Money has been set aside for relief...but not for you, you worthless piece of shit.

From the Barrack Hussein Website: Amend the North American Free Trade Agreement: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers.

Translated: The leaders of Mexico and Canada will chortle briefly before giving Barrack the finger and possibly dropping trou and showing him their browneyes. Caveat Emptor motherfucker. We punted NAFTA into the stands and can either invade said countries or help them industrialize in a more significant way to make this mutually beneficial. "Fixing it so that it works for American workers" would entail granting American workers Visas to move to either Quebec or Chihuahua. When given the choice of learning french or Spanish, and making less than $5 a day on the assembly line, I think the American workers in question will punch "2" on the touchpad and opt for English...and another president.

Bottom line last: We need the Federal Government taking care of us like we need a third nipple. When given the choice between the Government providing me with anything, I must ask the question "at what expense to my right to self-determination will this entail?" If I ask the government for something, and they give me something that is sub-standard, to whom do I complain? God? Will He send a plague of locusts or a pox among them?

No, so don't ask the government for shit. If any guy stands before you and says that the government can help you, you have a civic duty to punch that guy as hard as you can. We need to tell both Mr. Barrack and Mr. McCain to shut the fuck up and worry about the Federal Reserve, not my mortgage or health care. People, these two guys have big designs on increasing the burden of the Federal Government onto your shoulders. Each one of you might oughta ask a fuckin' question here pretty quick...and then question the answer. Both of them want both your money and your liberty, and this is the state of where the fuck we are in 2008. Learn to swim.

3) Epilogue. Well, some genius managed to make me the assistant Operations Officer of TTECG within the last month, until the new Asst. OpsO gets up to speed. This means that, while I have less fuck-off time, I do get to finally express myself at work like I've been wanting to for the past ten months. "I celebrate competence". Do not call or come by unless you have a clue, lest I become sarcastic, cynical, and caustic. Do not drink the last half-cup of coffee without making more, I have rubber bands, by God...and an endless ability to follow you down the hall decrying how lame you truly are for leaving me a half a fucking cup of coffee...

It's me, Andy Watson (aka: Leon), Scott Conway (aka: Rowdy Yates), and Matt Good (aka: Woodrow) training every single Marine Ground Combat Element to go to combat. If that doesn't scare you, then you need to stay in Quantico, by God.

No escape from the mass mind rape
Play it again jack, and then rewind the tape
And then play it again and again and again
Until ya mind is locked in
Believin' all the lies that they're tellin' ya
Buyin' all the products that they're sellin' ya
They say jump and ya say how high

Ya brain-dead

Ya gotta fuckin' bullet in ya head
-Rage Against the Machine, "Bullet in the Head"

Immundus saecula saeculorum,
Unclean

Bile XLVII, Incommunicado

From 18 March 2008...

We have this thing that we do as Coyotes at TTECG on Range 400, that I was not too clear about until here very recently. It is called "sliding". To explain this so that you might understand, since you do not live on Range 400 as my Coyotes do, I will break it down like a fraction for ya.

Aside from assessing the actions of the battalions/companies/platoons as they go through exercise Mojave Viper as the last stop in their pre-deployment training, we also control their execution of various live-fire ranges. That means that we are the safety backstop, and are "painting" enemy actions for them as they approach various objectives ("Okay, you are receiving sporadic, effective fire back from that trench line, because there is no suppression on it to keep the enemy's head down") and we also ensure that they are not going to shoot each other as they advance down range toward their objectives while simultaneously providing suppressive fires onto those same objectives. This involves much communication and running about behind them, armed with clipboards which double as a sort of flag, and communicating with each other in a manner that is almost like air-traffic control. ("31 Mike, Unclean on danger gun, active over your right shoulder, from table top to right side center". Answered by: "Unclean this is 31 Mike, I observe your impacts and you remain clear", or "Unclean this is 31 Mike, those fires are denied from that position". ) Hundreds of radio calls, all going at the same time, and constant movement downrange behind the Marines executing the training event. As the company attack at Range 400 involves attacks on two discrete objectives by three different rifle platoons, the head Coyote on the range, "the corridor Coyote", assigns Coyotes to cover-down on the two platoons going after the first major objective, and then designates a certain number of them to "slide" to the third platoon and cover-down on their subsequent actions on the other objective. For these "sliders", what is involved is a dead sprint over broken rocky ground for about 200 meters, assuming that the third platoon has moved up towards the secondary objective (or "cheated up") as his sister platoons assaulted the main objective.

Last week, I decided to play along with the maneuver Coyotes, and help them in their control of Range 400 on Saturday. My good friend, Bile recipient, and former fellow-company commander, Andy Watson, was the "corridor Coyote" for the first run of Range 400 that day. He had been champing at the bit to corridor a 400, with me as a subordinate Coyote, so that he could designate me as a "slider" and otherwise cause me physical discomfiture. So, right after the first objective was taken down by the Marines of Fox Co. 2/7, Andy starts calling for "sliders up". He doubly screwed me in this, due to the fact that I had been assigned to the platoon who had performed the last actions on the first objective, which involves a considerable sprint from their last covered position (the "lip of the wash") to their ultimate objective ("northwest"). So, just as I stood still for the first time in twenty minutes, and sucked down about a pint of water, I hear Andy in my headset, "sliders up, all sliders move to Southwest".

Shit.

Okay, I move over quickly, running seventy-five meters, and jumping down into the Southwest Trench. As I begin to scramble up the other side of the trench, Andy jumps on the net again, "where the hell is Unclean, Unclean move to southwest now", as I was literally five meters away from Andy, in the trench where he was standing.

"I'm right here, asshole" was the next call on the radio.

Well, as I scrambled up the other side of the Southwest trench line, Andy had cleared our movement with the Coyote who was still actively controlling medium-machinegun fire onto the secondary objective. So as the heel of my left boot successfully negotiated its way onto the apex of Southwest, Andy calls out, "Sliders, you are clear to move".

Shit.

My fellow sliders (most of whom had been standing and waiting at Southwest for the past ten minutes, not one over the age of twenty-five), sprinted downhill in front of me, towards the platoon that was preparing to attack the secondary objective. Unfortunately for me, this platoon had NOT cheated up towards the secondary objective during the attack on the first objective, which resulted in us negotiating another hundred-or-so meters of broken, rocky terrain at a full sprint than is normally necessary.

Refusing to allow myself to lag behind my fellow Coyotes, I maintained their break-neck pace to link up with the platoon in the Yankee wash, all the while telling myself "the guy in orange will not pass out, the guy in orange will not pass out". (Coyotes wear orange flak vests and orange camelbacks.) We finally stop, and I was breathing heavily, but not in bad shape, really. Except that the water that I had sucked down at Northwest absolutely refused to stay where I put it...

Now, as part of the Coyote "thing", we have these Motorola radio sets, walkie-talkies essentially, with remoted headsets that allow us to monitor radio traffic while in close proximity to people who are shooting all manner of firearms, mortars, and rocket systems. The headsets are really cool, as they vibrate onto the Coyote's tympanic bones in front of the ear, while also having a microphone that rests in front of the Coyote's mouth, with a push-to-talk button that clips to the chest-area of the flak jacket. Now, I have only recently conditioned myself to moving the microphone away from my lips before spitting tobacco juice. However, I have not conditioned myself to moving my mic before projecting eight ounces of water out of my body, as a result of sprinting for roughly 200 meters.

So, to review, not only did I throw up, I did so all over my mic, which continues to smell like Bile.

Appropriate, I think.

Friends and countrymen, it's like a non-electric firing system for your synapses, it's...


BILE,
Vol. XLVII,
Incommunicado

1) "That fucking GS-13 at TTECG is absolutely right, by God"... Many of you saw this a few weeks ago and immediately thought, "Oh shit, Larry is going to be absolutely insufferable now". Guess what? You were right. Within a week of the "Valentines' Day Bile" that I subjected you good people to last month, the Commandant of the United States Marine Corps came out with a statement that repeated every single point that I hit on in that Bile. He mentioned that our vehicles were heavy, unrecoverable, and ungainly in an off-road situation. He said that the body armor that we've foisted on the troops is too heavy, and does not allow for the Marines on the ground to do their primary job and "close with and destroy" the enemy that they might encounter. Jimmy reads the Bile, kids. He's a fan. You heard it here first.

2) "No, I cannot actually lead you in any appreciable manner, but I can pipe out e-mails like it's nobody's bidness..." I was coming out of the commissary today, and saw a group of six teenagers sitting on the front curb, obviously waiting for a ride. They were obviously friends, judging from their proximity and familiarity with one another, but each had his or her back to the entire group, with their cell phones open, and were either texting someone or talking on the phone. I drove home from the commissary with that on my mind. It seemed wrong, somehow. I remember days in that same situation, a bagger waiting for a ride from Ma after a shift, and I remember some of the greatest conversations ever. Through face-to-face contact with a member of the human race, I came to know Mike Reynolds, Juan Pacheco, and John Gass on a very basic and important level. I knew their likes, dislikes, who they were going out with, what was wrong with their car, where the party was that weekend , etc...

It's my observation, folks, that the modern world is obviating all of that. Nobody is forced into interpersonal contact anymore. We only talk to the people who appear in our "Five". We only interact with people on an ancillary basis, via telephone, text, email, chat.

Take poker for example. I have been playing on-line poker for months. It is a game that necessitates the reading of an opponent's visage, mien, and betting patterns. This past weekend, (which is something that I'll get into later), I played poker against a buncha folks at the Colorado Belle Casino in Laughlin, NV, as part of the semi-annual logistical movement of children to and from the Llano Estacado and the Mojave Desert. What I found was a table full of people who were effective at reading betting patterns, but were absolutely ineffective at reading and understanding sighs, pregnant silences, and other visual cues that indicate the relative strength of one's hand. As a result, I turned forty bucks into $160. (One can imagine me talking endlessly, through the entire affair, whether I had a 7 and a 2, or pocket kings...) I attribute that to the fact that the majority of those individuals (at least the ones that I queried at my end of the table) had only played poker online.

Another example: Major Woodrow F. Call, who is a Coyote that I work with, and have known since 1995. Woodrow is a man whom I call friend, and is one of my heroes. He achieved this hero status when I realized that not only did he not own a cell phone (his wife Julie has a cell, but not Woodrow), but he actually kept his home phone muted, so that unless he was standing on top of his answering machine when a call came in, one could not reach Woodrow by telephone, in any way. One communicated with him only on his terms. It was awesome that a Marine Officer, who as a group are normally so obsessed with instant information, and full control of any and all situations, absolutely refused to communicate with anyone on any other terms than his own. Originality! In a guy that, until 2002, slept with a copy of the Marine Officers’ Guidebook under his pillow!

Throughout this period, I sat in on Urban Warfare classes, and was impressed with the level of involvement that Woodrow displayed. Despite the fact that he was not the primary instructor, Woodrow maintained a constant awareness of what was being talked about, and would interject in places where the primary instructor was uncertain in a very meaningful and valuable fashion.

Then, three or four months ago, TTECG saw fit to give Woodrow a blackberry cell phone. Since then, I have witnessed Woodrow in the back of classes, in what we call "Blackberry Defilade". He's reading his emails, and catching up, staying to the "left of the bomb", keeping on his game. And while this might be awesome for him personally, I contend that it has a deleterious effect on the here and now.

We, as a society, have become so oriented on organization, and what is going to happen next, that we have forgotten the joy of what is happening right fucking now. (Yes, Jerry. There are exceptions.) Not only that, but we are not talking to one another. We are so consumed with the pace of what is going on in our little worlds, that we are not actually interacting with anybody. There is no joy in actually "doing" anything, because we have become so obsessed with what comes next. As Shakespeare said of the Queen in Macbeth:

She should have died hereafter;

There would have been a time for such a word.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day

To the last syllable of recorded time,

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death.

Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

I have personally seen so many examples of this that I will not single out one dude (besides Woodrow, and he’ll never forgive me...) but suffice to say it's a fucking trend, people. We need to slow down, talk to one another, put down the Goddamn cell phone. Fuck, turn it off, for Chris'sake. Stop emailing instructions to your people, but go talk to them, look them in the eye, watch the dawning of their understanding, not only of your direction, but of your intent. The “why” is being lost these days, by God.

Example: Laura is talking to Dana on the phone, (the beautiful wife of my best friend, Jerry). She says to me, as she's on the phone, "hey, can you switch out vehicles with Jerry this Friday, he needs to use your truck to get some stuff for their garage sale?" After the phone conversation with Dana, Laura confirmed that the vehicle swap is okay with me. I said "Yeah, Jerry needs to pick up some tables from MCCS for the garage sale, no problem." Laura said, "Oh, I guess you've talked to him about this already."

I hadn't, but I know Jerry (after 15 years) well enough to predict his decisions/actions. If Jerry needs a truck for a garage sale, I know why. Two days prior to this, there was another example of my ability to predict Jerry's actions. We were going to Laughlin, to pre-stage ourselves for Joel's triumphant return to Twentynine Palms. Two hours before we left Twentynine Palms, I called Jerry from the liquor store, telling him that I was picking up a bottle of scotch. Had I not done so, he would have purchased a bottle himself, he later reported. Implicit communication.

We're missing this, in the world of instant communication. To know an individual well enough to KNOW his actions/decisions. In this world of simulated contact, the ability to communicate with a look, with a subtle phrase, with a glance is going the way of the Dodo. Its replacement is a scroll of semi-literate emails and text messages that offer no depth of emotion, no specificity of existence other than "s'up?". A thousand years from now, as historians and archeologist sift the ashes of this era, they will find no valuable source documents with which they can judge our decisions and actions. Nobody writes letters anymore. Nobody hand-writes a diary anymore. They'll just find a backed up disk that has chat logs with such riveting interpersonal drama as:

wu? (what’s up?)
nm-u? (not much, you?)
n-jhowmf (naw, just hanging out with my friends)
lol (that was indeed, funny)
lmao (I agree wholeheartedly)
brb (I promise to return soon)
kk (please do, I will remain here, waiting for you)

Those people, thousands of years from now, will sit for years in various conferences, discussing the possible alien factors that resulted in the retards, who could only communicate thusly, discovering space travel, nuclear power, and subatomic theory. They will come up with all kinds of insane theories, but all will miss the mark, because, it’s too basic to the human experience for them to believe. They will never guess that sometime around 1998, we just stopped talking to one another.

People, turn that shit off. When your damn phone vibrates...ignore it. Interact with the people around you. If you have subordinates, type, print, and then deliver your instructions to them in person, without a goddamn PowerPoint brief (Chicken, don’t make me slam that door again!). Then, when they start to execute your instructions, GO TALK TO THEM, FOR CHRISSAKE. Watch their faces to see if they understand. Ask if they have any questions. Tell them a fucking joke and watch for reactions. Get to know them. Understand the people around you. The "5" on your cell phone is a box that you've been neatly placed in. Fuck that. Go to a bar just to find the crazoids that inhabit such places and befriend them for no apparent reason. (I've actually made a lifelong friend named "Mike" in San Clemente, CA. Mike has had his license revoked, has been barred from Goody's in San Clemente, and has been placed on a two drink maximum at Duke's, next door. He gets about on a Kermit bike. Funniest fuckin' guy I've met in ten years...)

3) "Wouldn't it be great if there was some organization who took an oath to defend your right to free speech?..." People, I know that many of you have seen this, but I haven't received it from the entire mailing list, so I felt it appropriate to include it in this Bile. It is a video of a "Daily Show" correspondent, if there is such a thing, interviewing the protestors in Berkeley, CA. It may be the funniest political commentary that I've seen in six months. http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=163653&title=marines-in-berkeley. Thank you, carry on.

4) "Hey frenchy...shut your fucking mouth..." In the aforementioned semi-annual logistical movement of Las Ninos Del Sucio to and from the Llano Estacado, Jerry and I ventured to Laughlin, NV, as is our custom in these situations. As I mentioned in Bile a few months ago, the gambling odds between Laughlin and Las Vegas remain constant, while Laughlin runs about 25% total cost, and Jerry and I are both married dudes with a couple of good-conduct medals between us, so Laughlin is our natural choice. After the telephone exchange mentioned in the second section in this missive, Jerry picked me up from my house, and we drove out, arriving at the luxurious Tropicana Express about 4 p.m. with a comp'd room and a fifth of Talisker Scotch. We then proceeded on a bender of legendary proportions. Among the funnier moments was when we were on a $3 craps table, losing our ass, and a Hawaiian dude named Billy came and saved us. Now, most people who play craps will use the handy chip rack that lines the table to organize their chips in orderly rows, commonly by denomination. Not Billy. As this guy rolled numbers like a fucking CPA during tax season, making hundreds of dollars in red $5 chips, he kept raking his dough and piling it along the entire rack in front of him. It was insane. Strangely though, when a guy with luck like that shows up, the entire table's ability to stay off of the evil #7 is enhanced, and everyone rolls better. Not this time. I started putting ten on the pass line, and back it with 20 in odds when Billy had the dice. When he eventually succumbed to the evil 7...after ten minutes or so of rolling fours, fives, sixes, eights, nines, and tens...and the dice came to me, I'd put down $3 on the pass line with no odds. I'd keep it that way until Billy picked up the rocks again. Amazing. I eventually broke even, after the third round of scotch/rocks, and went to play poker at the aforementioned $2 blind/$12 max table. Jerry remained at the craps table, soaking up scotch like a roll of Bounty paper towels.

I next saw Jerry an hour and a half later. By that time, I was up about $120. After I heard Jerry yell "HAAAAAAAAM!" at the top of his lungs for the fifteenth time, and watched in dull amazement as he practiced tai-chi at the rail to my left, I folded an 8-3 off suit, and went to talk to him. He asked me, "what'sh up with thoshe tight assh motherfuckersh shitting next to you", indicating the men of clear european decent who were sitting next to me, the nearest one with his younger sister sitting behind him. I had not asked after their nationality, but listening to the babble that my immediate neighbor was holding forth with his sister earlier, I thought them to belong to the french tribe. Jerry immediately went into blitz mode, as is befitting a man of clear German ancestry when encountering an apparent frenchman. Exclaiming, in that french-chef's voice, Jerry began the "Ungggghhh-hunggghhh-hunghhhh!" exclamations, and other epithets. I had money in the pot, with pretty decent cards, so I must confess that I stopped paying attention. I did, however, catch the back end of an exchange between frenchy's little sister and Jerry, when Jerry said in that loud, drunken-Marine voice: "Hey frenchy, you just sit there and shut your fucking mouth". Soon afterwards, the lady's brother leaned in and mentioned that the pair of them actually hailed from Kosovo, and were both ethnic Serbs. When I related that to Jerry, I got a "Hmmph, close enough, by God." People, you can't dream this shit up.

Well, after the cards went cold again, and just ahead of the greenpeace storm troopers who had undoubtedly been summonsed to answer the insult to our european friends, Jerry and I reeled out of the Colorado Belle and slid over to the Edgewater Casino and Resort...which is like calling Headquarters, Marine Forces Reserve a Teutonic example of military order and staff efficiency. Well, we found the only $3 table in the building and kinda camped out. Through innumerable rounds of scotch, white russians, and beer, Jerry and I played for the better part of five hours. At one point, the pit boss increased the minimum to $25, in order to close the table, and hoping that we would leave, but we were grandfathered in at three bucks-a-hand, and had no intention of leaving. After the minimum bet sign stayed at $25 for two hours, the oncoming pit boss just turned off the fucking sign. Beautiful. I've never won an issue at a casino by attrition before. We just outlasted the motherfuckers. Fuckin’ awesome.

At 0400, we finally tucked it in and walked a somewhat indirect path over the quarter mile of parking lot back to the Tropicana (the total distance that we travelled was probably double that, with scaling of fences involved). Halfway through the parking lot, it occurred to me that there was a real possibility that we would be late in picking up Joel on his 1130 flight at McCarron airport, which was about 100 miles away (of course, Jerry and I thought it was only 50 or 60 miles away, but that didn't matter just then.) For some reason, I thought it would be a great idea to warn Joel, right at that very moment, that this possibility existed. So, at 0600 Joel’s time, I drunken dialed my 19 year-old son. "Hey shit-teeth", I fairly shouted into the phone, "Jerry and I are in Laughlin, and you can probably guess at the shape that we're in. If we're late, for the love of Christ, don't call your Mom. Call me." Jerry then grabbed the phone. "We're doing God's work, here!" he exclaimed into the phone. "Don't Fuck this up, Joel! Don’t Fuck this Up! Call us!"

"Dad, can I go back to sleep now?" Joel pleaded, after Jerry thrust the phone back at me.

"Yes son," I said, satisfied.

"DON'T FUCK THIS UP!" Jerry contributed.

And so we made it back to the hotel and had breakfast, and hit the rack about 0430 or 0500. I ordered a wake up call for 1000.

After getting a wake up call at 0830, I reset the thing for thirty minutes later, and finally awoke about 0930 to Jerry milling about. I looked up to find that he was pouring two glasses of scotch. Thinking that he meant to throw one down for breakfast, I got up. He shooed me away, finished brewing coffee, irished it up with the aforementioned scotch, and we got on the road.

Ten or fifteen minutes out of Laughlin, we noticed that Las Vegas was further than we had planned. But as Jerry's car has an accelerator pedal, and in a masterful bit of time-space estimation, Jerry pulled us into the McCarron parking lot a bare three minutes after Joel made it from the Southwest terminal to the main terminal. Rather than linking up immediately, and in light of our likely BAH level, we thought it best to invest in Starbucks before tagging the lad and starting out again. After much milling about in an attempt to link up, we finally affected it, and I called Laura, indicating that I had found the lad.

"Oh, so you finally got him."

Joel fucked it up. Amazing.

Immundus saecula saeculorum*,
Unclean

(*Unclean, to all eternity, without end)

Bile XLVI, Pshrinks on the Line

How perfect is this? A shot of Talisker, behind a pint of Uncle Sam Black Lager (Sam Adams. An uncle. We've met.) following a meal of T-bones cooked on my very own grill, in SoCal (where it was shorts and sleeves weather today), the night after my abundantly talented daughter did some sort of Uri Geller shit on-stage (as she performed a supporting role in "Bye Bye Birdie" at Theater 29, our own playhouse out here in the middle of the Mojave) and convinced an entire theater full of people to cash in their CDs, to sell all their worldly possessions, to sell their children into indentured servitude, and give the proceeds to a her in the cause of freeing Tibet from the Communist Chinee.

After the curtain-call, I asked her what she had planned. She said, "Dad, this fight against oppression in South America ain't what it once was. Most of the countries down there are either wholly-owned by the drug cartels, or are paternalistic enough to give the Pope a case of penis-envy. We're not gonna create arepresentative republic kind down there. So, I've changed my focus to Tibet. Richard Gere's a pussy, and they need someone who can operate over there without getting their tits in the way. I've managed to get support from that whole "Other Government Agency" (OGA), who has given me a Tactical Psychological Operations Team, some Human Intelligence Exploitation Marines, and a section of MH-153s from Fort MacDill, Florida to get us around. The only stipulation that OGA put on me was that I've got to raise money, since the Global War on Terrorism COSTJON is about to be turned off after the election. It's like Jake and Elwood...I'm on a mission from God."

I wiped my eyes, kissed her forehead, and wished her luck.

I later saw a bucket full of $100 bills make its way to the dressing room after the show...

Kids, it ain't the Monroe Doctrine, it's the El Sucio Doctrine. And we ain't fuckin' around this time. It's kinda like the Carter thing with the Panama Canal. Except we kill all the Panamanians and take the Canal (that we built) for ourselves...

It's...

BILE
Vol. XLVI
Old Ways are best, and the genetic hot-tub of the industrialized nations

1) "You know Jim, we need more gynocologists out there where the rubber meets the road..." As has become custom since that ambulance chasing fuck, Wally, has occupied the space next to me at work, I've been damn-near kilt by him dragging the least common denominator for me to examine. Lookit the attachment. Again, I'll pause to freshen my drink, as you check it out.

Ready?

Exercise.

Please understand that since I was in my mid-twenties, the military has been treating me and my Marines as if we were a bunch of addled teens. Those of you who can remember the mid-nineties, and were on a UDP rotation to Okinawa, can attest to this. Back then, we would get brief after brief after brief about how we should really not drink to the point where we were unable to stop ourselves from re-enacting the crime of the Kin Beach Rape in Okinawa. We had the Old-Man, the XO, the Chaplain, and even the battalion Medical Officer warn us of the long-term effects of being an asshole. At each step, they treated each and every Marine in the audience with a condescension that bordered on criminal. It was as if we were mere children, incapable of making mature decisions in any context. Incapable of recognizing cause and effect. Just a buncha dumb assholes.

Well, my friends, it wasn't true then, and it ain't true now.

Check it out. We hail from a tradition of warriors who lived on rats, captured Jap rations, and K-rats on Guadacanal in 1942. Thousands of us died on the black beaches of Iwo Jima. Thousands more perished in the jungles of Okinawa. And so it goes...Inchon, Chosin, Khe Sanh, Hue City, the Easter Offensive, Fallujah. Lotsa good guys interred in the ground, sacrificing themselves to water the Tree of Liberty, and in the name of the guy to their left and right. There are hundreds of thousands of Marines who survived these heroes, and still cling to the memory of just how great those guys were. How the world is just a little more drab without them here. But getting by, because they've gotta go out tonight on OP, or out today to answer some PIRs (Priority Intelligence Requirements...i.e. "who/where the fuck is this guy?") Those guys, my friends, are fuckin' hard men. Carved out of wood.

But times, they is a-changin'...In this war, you see the addition of a couple of significant people to the average infantry battalion that goes forward. The first: The Staff Judge Advocate (SJA), a lawyer. The second: an embedded reporter. The presence of these individuals, while sometimes diverting (you know that I speak of you, Kazman), is also an admission of how bound we have become to modern international opinion.

"Imagine if you will", an infantry battalion advancing under fire through Hue City, Vietnam, in 1968. Somewhere, in Hue, a Squad takes fire from a building. They advance under that fire, using suppression and alternating bounds to close with and destroy those assholes, whose most fervent wish is their loud and uncomfortable death.

They enter and clear the building. While they do so, one of the Vietnamese assholes, that was trying to kill them moments earlier, rolls over conspicuously in some death throe, or other wild spasm. The third man in the room sees movement towards his mate out of the corner of his eye and kills that motherfucker with a burst out of his rifle. Because he has taken fire from this house. Because that guy in the floor looks like every other motherfucker that he has fought and killed today. Because he'd rather die than either of the two Marines who entered the building before him.

Now, in those days, this kind of reaction was understood. It was expected, and it was hailed by peers and superiors.

That same scenario happened in Fallujah in 2004, was documented by an embedded reporter, and we heard the fucking hue and cry from the media as to the inhumanity of the young Marine who shot that asshole. What nobody saw was the second and third order effects of that hue and cry. The battlion to whom that Marine belonged had to deal with inquiries from higher, once that whole scene played out on national news. These inquires occupied the time of the battalion commander, the company commander, and the platoon commander. This detracted from the abilities of those men to do their jobs, and kill more motherfuckers who would wage war against the United States. It represented a reduction in the discretionary combat power that could be wielded against the enemy. And this was because a reporter was with that particular squad...

Now that you've read the attached article, imagine a battalion commander, intent on taking the fight to the insurgent and developing relationships with the local leadership. Not only does he have numerous reporters in orbit around his command at different points in his deployment, but he has a staff judge advocate on hand as well.

This SJA is to the infantry battalion what "Tom Hagan" was to the Corleone family in "The Godfather" . He advises the commander as to the most legal way to accomplish his mission, while he also performs a myriad of investigative duties relating to Marines shooting at or into the Iraqi people, plus he accomplishes legal assistance duties as he is able, and (in the case of Kaz), he declares "war trophies" to be within the letter of the law, so we can bring them home. (I pause to stub out my cigarette in the Soviet 152mm artillery projectile base that Kaz allowed me to pack back to CONUS in '04...)

Now, imagine this same battalion commander, who has to answer to your run-of-the-mill, belt-fed Regimental Commander. Added to that, he has to maintain order and discipline over the 1100 cats that he has to herd everyday in a combat zone through his five company commanders. He must maintain awareness of current operations. He's gotta approve future targets and operations (while informing the aforementioned belt-fed Regimental Commander of that too). Meanwhile, he's dispensing military justice with regards to violations of the Laws of War, and/or the Uniform Code of Military Justice, with the help of his battalion Sergeant Major, (while informing the aforementioned belt-fed asshole of that, also). During all of this, mind you, he's leading the battalion by circulating the battlespace and spot-checking Marines with regards to their abilities to accomplish his intent. He's interacting and developing his company commanders. He approves and forwards citations for heroic action. He writes letters of condolence to the families of the fallen...people, that fatass Donald Trump would tap out within five minutes, by God.

Okay, now imagine this same busy man, engaged in the daily maintenance of his assigned battlespace, as was described above. But now he's been waylayed by a bevy of psychologists who think that 2nd squad, 2nd platoon, Echo Co 2/7 is too strung out. "They need rest and refit", "they're at their breaking point", "I'm going to recommend to the Division Commanding General that they be pulled off the line".

We can't do this to that man. What is at question here is leadership within the United States Marine Corps, people. Each Marine on the line has his peers to confide in, (and we do confide in them, to our demise...isn' that right, Godboy?) Plus, those junior Marines have fire team and squad leaders watching and listening to them. Platoon sergeants watching, listening to, and guiding their squad leaders. Platoon commanders ensure order and discipline are maintained within their platoons. Company Gunnery Sergeants and First Sergeants listen to and monitor the relative order, sanity, and discipline of the platoons. Company executive officers ensure that the platoon commanders are in-step, or at least organized in some meaningful way. Company commanders are the fathers of these 180-200-man families. Battalion Gunners provide experience and an objective ear to any and all that approach them with a problem. Most of you have rolled your eyes at me by now, because you know all of this. I brought it out that way because this is the support network, people. It was designed to not only give orders and assault objectives, but to maintain sanity. It is a very effective paradigm. This paradigm has worked, and worked well, since the time of the fuckin' Roman Legions.

The attached article proposes another distractor to the entire process. It proclaims that officers and Staff Non-Comissioned Officers cannot lead our Marines effectively. Further, It provides a secondary chain of information that will violate the principal of "unity of command" (fingers interlaced here, Kaz) by creating a parallel reporting chain that resides outside the one dude who is supposed to be responsible for making the fuckin' call (i.e.: the battalion and/or the company commander).

And so, the guy who should be making the fucking call cannot do so because he has been saddled with an entire psych staff who is analyzing his every bowel movement. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not how wars are won...that is how they are lost. While I am certain (with every fiber of my being) that the non-green/non-trauma aspect of Navy medicine wishes to get into the Iraqi Theater of Operations to validate their existence now that al Anbar is as quiet as a fuckin' church, that should not mitigate into this intrusion into the daily affairs of battalion operations. Period.

So, that's the argument. But here's the backstory on this. Line up the distractors in this case: International Media discontent for the war and it's analysis of the inevitable civilian deaths therein (Media embeds as the action and SJA involvement as the counteraction); and the overwhelming stigma of PTSD that results everytime a former jarhead gets arrested (Arrest as the action, and Psych participation in a shooting war as the counteraction).

People, I've been around Marines for a long damn time. Most of them are not these frail, vulnerable creatures that the media has identified for you. Yes, many have seen things that man can never get his mind around, and that has been a trend since mankind started killing one another in an organized fashion...

But for the most part, your Marines are resilient men with a valid and time-tested support structure to develop them as men, and maintain their sanity during the most trying of challenges. They are not frail creatures, my friends. They are sturdy professionals who can bear the brunt of the longest war in the history of this nation. They are who they wished that they could be back when they were ten years-old. They are United States Marines, by God.

2) "Mr. Adams, I'm sorry, but we on the staff have decided that you represent too large a burden on the current gene pool..." (Okay, that's probably something that I should have heard sometime in the last 17 years, but work with me here...) People, we have gone past the Great Idea Cut Off Point. Please note that i have predicted this here, in this space: We are keeping alive people who have no business contributing to mankind. Herrnstein and Murray dealt with this important topic in their very controversial book "The Bell Curve". Basically, what Murray argued was that those who were less inclined to produce were more inclined to make babies than those who were actually making money. I absolutely agree with the conclusions reached in that tome, and furthermore feel that we need to add an adendum to the hipocratic oath. After the phrase, "First, do no harm", should be another oath whcih abides to Darwinian truth: "Second, stop letting dipshits procreate"...

I have personally witnessed this phenomena, as a teenager, being raised by a step-father who, if he was born in 1850 instead of 1950, would have curled up and died at the age of 17. He is emotionally unsuited, at a very basic level, for effective survival in this reality. However, due to modern mental health care advances, advances in medication, and other myriad advances in the ability of modern health care to prop up a feeble fuckin' basketcase, he has been allowed to grind out an additional half-century, despite obvious genetic challenges. He remains worthless, but thankfully has not spawned any progeny. This is but one example, I see other examples everytime I turn on the TV on weekdays before work and see the mutants waving flags, banners, and posters outside the "Today Show" set.

In 1927, Supreme Court Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. wrote an awesome opinion in this specific area. In upholding a Virginia state compulsory sterilization law, (Buck v. Bell), Holmes found no constitutional bar to state-mandated sterilization of an institutionalized, allegedly "feeble-minded" woman, saying that "three generations of imbeciles is enough." The repurcussions on my eternal soul that will result from this entire line of reasoning , and the fact that it is making the hair stand up on the back of my libertarian neck, begs that we quickly move on...

I bring no clear solution to this pandemic. (I mean, aside from setting Sarah loose amongst the populace with clearance to stun, collar, and/or sterlize these assholes, but we won't go there...) I'm just identifying another issue that will bring us down eventually. At some point, as the dead weight in society continues to gain mass, while the capable stagger under their inertia, any forward progress will stop utterly. And all because we have made huge advances in technology, and then made that technology a "right" for all to enjoy.

Segue into one of my raging pet peeves: The alleged "right" of all to health care..

Now, logically, YOU don't have a right unless I have a corresponding duty to recognize that right. You have a right to speak, and I have a corresponding duty not to interfere with you. But speech doesn't cost anything, right? You hear me talk all the goddamn time without spending a nickel. (Moral of the story, you can wish all you want, but i'll still send you this shit.)

With health care, it was never intended to be a fuckin' right, and here's why, (Hillary, you acerbic bitch):

Medicine is a business. If people have a right to health care, then i have a corresponduing duty to pay for that health care. If people have a right to housing, then I have a duty to pay for their house. If they have a right to employment, then I have a duty to give them a job.

Thus, there is no right to health care, housing, or employment. I only agreed to provide those things for my own children. Everyone else can kiss my ass. Every man, woman, and child in this fuckin' world has parents, let them worry about those things. So, please think about the definition of such things as "rights" and "duties" before you open your man-pleaser. Thank you.

3) "Supposedly, he was born in a mental institution and only sleeps for one hour a night...he's a great man." A few random observations from out here in the bleacher seats:

a) Hope once again springs eternal. Not since the effective end of Communist rule in the former Soviet Republics have we witnessed the downfall and peaceful transition of power from madmen as we have these past six months. Missed it, didn'tcha? Yesterday, the Cuban Parliament officially handed power from Fidel Castro to his brother, Raoul. When one considers that Steinbrenner handed over the daily operations of the Yankees to his two sons, we can see that history will highlight the first months of 2008 along with 1989,1945, 1781, and 1649. Viva Libertidad!

b) Ten years later, and Jared is still making money off of not being fat. I haven't been obese for 37 years. I haven't noticed any corresponding income to match what this retard is making simply for not eating his way into the grave. Somebody. Anybody. Please. Why is this turd floating up to the surface again? Quick, somebody flush, or just mail the dude a quarter-pounder with cheese. I'm seriously tempted to send Sarah out with a captive bolt pistol and some meat tenderizer. Subway'd make a killing on Jared sandwiches ("Less than 10g of fat per serving!").

c) The annual Douchebag award. I listened to Brian Williams on the Bob Costas radio program the other day. I have officially thrown his name into the ring for the honor of being "the biggest douchebag in the galaxy". This guy makes Al Gore sound reasonable. His homoerotic cooing over Barak Hussein Obama is more difficult to listen to than the Twentynine Palms Junior High Band. How is this guy not being thrown to the wolves for being such a one-sided asshole? Brian Williams should be fed a handful of concertina wire, and dragged behind a subway car.

d) Please Exile Berkely, CA... A guy I used to work with is the current Recruiting Station Commanding Officer of the Sacremento, CA Marine Recruiting Station. Among his many challenges (the foremost being continued survival without killing hippies in his immediate vicinity) is the Recruiting Sub-Station that is in Berkely, CA. I'm sure most have seen it, but to conflagurate the entire crew here, I direct your attention to this. Apparently, the good people of Berkely wish they were speaking German, Japanese, or a really bad dialect of Russian. Feel free to piss on anything or anybody from Berkely, CA at your nearest convenience. My friend Brian, the poor bastard that has to work up there, hasn't actually complained about this entire scenario, but just imagine what it's like for him, a combat veteran who has commanded a company in Iraq, and put men in the ground, but has to go to work everyday around such ingrateful assholes. I used to think that Texas would probably secede from the Union sometime in the next hundred years. I think what is more likely is that the rest of the United States decides to kick California out of the fuckin' pool. I, for one, would not shed a tear...

4) Epilogue. Animal Mutha emailed an invitation to get drunk in Vegas last week. While I couldn't do it then, I will be up for a good drunk on 13 March, and again on 28 March, as we do the normal logistical moves to get Joel and Sarah to and from their Spring Break locales. I recommend a SCAMD Initial Planning Conference in Vegas that weekend. Anyone who is interested, gimme a yell within the next two weeks, and we'll put together a training schedule...

Mojave Viper wasn't about winning or losing.
It wasn't about words.
The hysterical shouting was in tongues, like a pentacostal church.
When Mojave Viper was over, nothing was solved,
but nothing really mattered.
Afterwards we all felt saved...

The liberator who destroyed your property has just realigned your perceptions...

Uva Uvam, Vivendo Varia, Fit,
Unclean

("One grape, seeing another, ripens")