Redeployment

would trade their seven-month deployment to Ramadi for that man’s life, living here?” No one raised a hand. Some Marines looked uncomfortable. Some looked angry. Some looked furious. “Now, I wouldn’t be surprised if this man supported the insurgency. The translator said the man was a bad guy. An ‘ali baba.’ But clearly, this man has suffered. And i

Here’s what orange is. You don’t see or hear like you used to. Your brain chemistry changes. You take in every piece of the environment, everything. I could spot a dime in the street twenty yards away. I had antennae out that stretched down the block. It’s hard to even remember exactly what that felt like. I think you take in too much information t

A liberal pussy journalist is trying to get the touchy-feely side of war and he asks a Marine sniper, “What is it like to kill a man? What do you feel when you pull the trigger?” The Marine looks at him and says one word: “Recoil.”

A human being in enough pain is just a screaming animal.

she blindfolded me and drove me twenty miles out of town, to a high point off the interstate where you could watch the roads stretch out forever across the plains toward all the places we’d rather be.

She puts a concerned face on. I’ve seen that face on women at bars when I open up. When I’m sober, it makes me angry. When I’m drunk, it’s what I’m looking for.

Eventually, Staff Sergeant would roll up and say, “Shut the fuck up, Suba. Hajji shot at us. Lance Corporal Suba shot back. Dead hajji. That’s the happiest ending you can get outside a Thai massage parlor. Now it’s over. Gunners, be alert, get positive ID, you’ll get your chance.”

There’s a perversity in me that, when I talk to conservatives, makes me want to bash the war and, when I talk to liberals, defend it. I’d lived through the Bush administration fucking up on a colossal scale, but I’d also gotten a very good look at the sort of state Zarqawi wanted to establish, and talking with anybody who thought they had a clear v

We took my combat pay and did a lot of shopping. Which is how America fights back against the terrorists.