Phelps, Jason, and Full Moon Heroes

Hey, it's Saturday night, and our Olympic American Swim Team once again has shown the world how to do it. I was so caught up in all the stuff...the woman's marathon, the fastest Jamaican man in the World, the women's swim team, and of course, the one that every one in America is so proud of Michael Phelps.

Anyway, if you missed it, you missed quite a lot. All our Olympic kids have just been the best in every way, just like our soldiers. Which should give us all the more reason to throw the bums out in Washington DC..(the whole lot of them) and start finding people who represent the champions that we truly are...

So, thanks to Army Mom...a champion in her own right...I present another letter from Jason..my favorite line being "Winning hearts and minds by being kind to the people."

That you are Jason, and they will not soon forget you.

Anyway, it's a full moon...everywhere tonight...China, Iraq, and my little ol neighborhood in Missouri...and that's a good thing.

**********


Letter from March, 2008



Well hello everyone. Yes, it is CPT Cxxxxx again but this time a week late with my weekly e-mail. This is because I have been very busy since I last wrote. Would you like to hear my exciting stories of Afghanistan? Shall I begin?

Last time when we left off, we had just finished putting the satellite system up. Well, guess what? That night we had a lightning storm and lightning struck the satellite system. It got knocked out of whack and the surge suppressor is shot but after buying another one and getting the satellite back up, we make the trip back down to Gardez to drop the commo people off, get our mail and then leave bright and early the next morning. That is the plan.

Well we get ready to go and guess what? If you guessed vehicle trouble, you are correct. Yes, the serpentine belt has broken and the air compressor is shot. It just so happens that there is one in Phoenix and a guy is coming in on a Chinook from Phoenix that morning. Well, he comes in and he gives the part to us, the only part in the whole 203rd CORPS and it is the wrong one! I’m telling ya’ this is a new $150,000 humvee and they are a lot of trouble.

The first week we got it, we had a flat tire and the AC tears up and it is not even a month old yet. It has less than 700 miles on it too. Well, we hook the wrong compressor up so that we can run the serpentine belts and then we leave Gardez 5 hours late. This is before a 4 ½ hour drive too.

I do not mind because some Navy buddies of mine are leaving tomorrow and I get a chance to say goodbye to them. (On a side note, there was a car bomb in Kabul today and all the roads are closed. The car bomb hit this convoy taking my buddies to Kabul International Airport (KIA) to take them home to the US. No word on US casualties but I do not think there are any as of yet).

When we get about an hour into our convoy back to Jaji, we run into coochies. Remember them? They are the nomads that travel to and from places all year long. These are coming in from Pakistan since the winter has lightened up and it is good to see them again. They travel with everything they have. It is not much but they put it on a camel or donkey and just walk to another place to live. I still like seeing the camels. They are so funny to see. They are so common here just like a cow or horse in the US. As with all roads in Afghanistan, we have to share them. Not only with cars and jingle trucks but also camels and sheep and goats! We pass several herds of them and there are hundreds of these little critters everywhere! We share the road with them and continue on our mission to FOB Herrera in Jaji.

When we get to Herrera, we stow our gear and it is shower night so we get a good shower that night too. We have several missions to go on the next few days. This is Friday and since we have not had a down day and we have a long week ahead of us, we take Saturday as a down day. I use that day to pack some of my gear and clothes to mail home.

Mom and Dad, there are several boxes headed your way. I promise I’ll go through them when I get home. Linda, there are some headed your way too. On Sunday, we have to go to BCP 12 and start to count the soldiers there and take attendance. The last time we did this; we collected everyone’s picture from every OP and stored them on a hard drive. This hard drive ‘mysteriously’ got erased. Yeah right, so we are doing this job again. This is at 8300’ elevation and although we can see rain back West towards Jaji, is snows and hails where we are. We are right on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is so pretty, if there was not a war going on here, tourism would be a nice business to be in.

Well, we are here and we get our information and then head back to Jaji. We take that information that we get and plan our next trip.

The next day, we plan to go to Spina Shegha and do the same thing as well as look at their force protection. You know, we put up concertina and barb wire the week prior. Well, they have improved the place a lot. They put up a lot more wire and pickets around the front side of the building as well as build trenches for them to fight from. There is still more work to do there but they have a good idea of what to do. We eat lunch with them and then once we get our information and pictures, we train them some on weapons safety and they have a fun time with this. That afternoon, we go back to Jaji. Another convoy yet tomorrow.

Ok today is a short convoy, we just have to go to the ABP HQ in Chawney to get the same information. While they are taking pictures, I take a look in their connex to inventory heavy weapons and crew served weapons. Ok, heavy weapons does not mean they weigh a lot (well, they do) but it is the higher caliber weapons. RPG’s, RPK’s etc. I inventory the RPG’s (Rocket Propelled Grenades) and RPK’s (I do not know what that stands for if anything). I make them open every box and we count by serial number every weapon in there. After telling me that there are only 12 RPG rounds, we open a box and find 7 more rounds. Another box reveals 7 more rounds as well as five 80mm recoilless rifle rounds. Again forgotten by the ABP. Well buried in the back is another box on the very bottom. They open it and lo and behold what do you think we find? We find 18 brand new RPK’s still in cosmoline and a piece of paper in the muzzle to keep dirt out. The ABP did not know this was in there either.

After we write the serial number down, they put all other boxes on the bottom of the pile and put the RPK’s on the very top. Let me say this. An RPK looks a lot like an AK-47 but with a bipod. It is fully automatic only and is a well built weapon. I’d like to have a few for my house. Hahaha I take a look at the other weapons in there. They look like they have been in a fire. They have. I find out that they were in the room when the propane tank exploded and burned and melted. There are 11 weapons that are just scrap iron now. One RPG is melted so bad, I cannot even get the serial number off the weapon. The men are still recovering from their burns but still have a long way to go on their road to recovery.

While here, we see some curious children outside our gate and I take my terp and go outside to talk to them. One girl is in a wheel barrow and there is another girl and boy with her. The girl in the wheel barrow and the boy and girl are brother and sister and the older girl is their cousin. I wonder what they are doing there alone but I find out that the mom and dad were in the clinic. The mom is pregnant and she was getting a check up. I wanted to ask what the matter with the one girl was but did not. I am so glad that I did not. Her feet were pointing outwards from each other. It became apparent that she can not walk. She is 10 and the medic said that surgery would not even help her. Poor child.

I take the opportunity to give them each a toy. A football for the boy and stuffed animals for the girls. A little bit later another girl comes up and I give her a stuffed animal too. Having a daughter myself, I have a soft spot for girls. I know what kind of life they will grow up in and I just feel sorry for them so I try to make their childhood memorable by kind United States soldiers. They are the future of Afghanistan. Winning hearts and minds by being kind and nice to the locals. If it just makes 1 person realize that US soldiers are really nice and not mean animals like they have been brought up to believe.

Well, we are still not through the week yet. We have a dismounted patrol scheduled for this morning. We are going to go to the town of Chawney and visit the shops and buy things and spend money in the town. This mission has several effects.

First, we are seen in the town making our presence known and not just staying on the FOB all the time. Second, we spend money in the local populace and third, it may help with the intelligence for this area since there is none. We last did this back in August before the suicide bomber killed 3 Americans at the bridge site in town. We went with the ABP as escort. It is very important to see them there. It lets the townspeople know that this is a combined operation and makes the ABP commander look good by bringing Americans into town to spend money. There were 10 of us and we each spent close to $40 each. Some of us spent a lot more than that. That is a lot of money for a town of only a few hundred people.

We leave around lunch time and go to the ABP to eat lunch with them. For 30 soldiers to eat, it costs $95 US dollars. Not too bad for drinks, potatoes, kabobs and bread for everyone. I love the Afghan food. While we are eating, the ABP commander tells us that the town really appreciated us going into town spending money and by nightfall, the local towns will know what we did and that will be a good thing. There are a few more villages that we plan to spend time in. The Major wants to be able to go into Ali Kheil (bad guy town) and do the same thing there. That is not going to happen soon but by the end of summer, he hopes he can do that.

We finish up eating and come back to the FOB for an AAR (After Action Review). We discuss what went well, what went wrong, if anything and how we can improve next time. We do this in the shade of our satellite system. After that, we are dismissed for the rest of the day. I still have work to do so I do that.

During this brief, I find out that our sister unit, the ABP in Chamkani led by Maj Cxxxxx, an Alabama guy and good buddy of mine, got ambushed yesterday going to Chamkani. (They got stuck in Gardez for 4 days because of a broken flywheel on a humvee. Go figure.) They were fired on by an RPG team. They returned fire and vacated the area. No US casualties. This area is South of us and is getting a lot hotter. It is a 4 hour drive to Chamkani from Jaji. We have to leave here, go back over the pass in Ahman Kheil and then another 3 hours to Chamkani. Not really that far but it is rough driving the roads.

All in all, the past two weeks, although very busy, have also been very productive. We sort of fixed our humvee. (It works but no AC), visited 3 ABP OP’s, took pictures of the soldiers there, got serial numbers off of weapons and found some that were forgotten about. We do a dismounted presence patrol in Chawney for the first time in 8 months and we all came back to the base safely.

The pictures are ok me and children in Chawney, 3 Bama boys in Chawney, a dress shop in town and some destroyed weapons that I mentioned earlier. Also are pictures of coochie camels, sharing the road with sheep, a Care Bear on a .50 cal machine gun (Ashlee, which one is it?) and me and the rest of my team after a mission to the Afghan/Pakistan border along with some gear and cigars that a buddy of mine sent to our team.

I’ll talk to everyone later! 62 days left in country on my 15-month tour. Woohoo!
Jason

APO AE 09354
P.S. If any of you still wish to send packages, please do so but start to stop around the first of April as I will be starting to out process and return to the United States. Mail will reach me but it will take a few extra weeks or months.

The Chinese Olympic Secret

Nobody Flashes: Today at the 2008 Beijing Olympia, we see just how excellent the Chinese are at soccer. Here we see Chou-chu-chu, a man who has worked so hard to obtain the gold metal for his team, that he lost more than the required weight usually expected for the sport.

In fact, Chou has done so many head butts, he no longer has any skin on his face, therefore he feels no pain, which gives him a definite edge over the Germans.

And...despite the ongoing efforts of one American boy who could swim the entire Pacific Ocean while eating five super-sized McDonalds Big Macs with one hand, with no problem...the Chinese continue to lead in gold metals and this excellence shows the world why!

Sychronized Diving: Find the Perfect Match!

Nobody Cares:

Last night I watched the synchronized Olympic diving exhibition, and of course, the Chinese won. Hey, they deserved to win because the problem with all the other countries was obvious to anyone with half a brain.

To all Western Coaches: If you get one guy who is four feet taller than your other guy, you might just ask yourself...is there something wrong with this picture? Why can't I get these two to look good?

Notice these two gold medal winners...Qin Wang and Wang Feng...did they win because they were better divers than the Russians or the Americans?

Not really.

But what made them look SOOOO good is that they were exactly the same height and weight and therefore LOOKED perfectly matched twirling around.

Okay, I admit. The other problem is the Chinese have probably trained these two boys just on those dives and had them together most of their lives, with their parents in some small apartment making NIKE's...and in America, our team was probably put together last year by some coach who just looked for another good diver to match his boy, not easily found here because all our schools have cut out PE (remember, Physical Education has been replaced with Recycling Classes) therefore, you might have to search long and wide for even two good divers.

As everyone saw, our boys were not exactly MATCHED in height or weight.

So, how do we solve the problem? Why, get them from the ARMY of course! Look at these two fine soldiers? Notice the form, the grace...and the fact that they are the SAME SIZE!

Get it together western nations, quite being so stupid. Start now and train for the next Olympics, all you need is a match! (duh)

John Edwards: King of the Bobo's

Nobody’s Perfect: Okay, he’s not perfect.

John Edwards, King of the Bobo’s, has been having an affair with a skinny blond. He has also been paying her to run around video taping his every bobonousious move. He put her up in an expensive mistress abode far away from his wife and kids. And on top of that, he lied about it all to the press even though his wife has known all about it for quite some time. She decided not to divorce him…for whatever reasons of her own.

Most likely, she has low self-esteem. Who wouldn’t after years of living with the ‘narcissist’ John Edwards? You’d have to have the ego of a Madonna to hold up against John’s nuptial arguments about his ongoing rendezvous with himself as his most favorite person of choice.

“Honey, that’s not my baby. I was just practicing “baby kissing” for my tours. You know, people hand you their babies all the time, it drives me crazy.”

While John Edwards was admitting his philandering ways, somehow to me, he didn’t look upset about it at all. After all, his wife knew---so his kids knew---and why should he be upset? Go ahead, beat him up. He’s already forgiven himself.

After all, Bill Clinton did exactly the same thing, and lied under oath, a much greater sin. John only lied to reporters. Has it hurt Bill’s career? Nope.

John probably looks in the mirror and sees another John…John Kennedy. The man who was the poster boy for adultery; a man who used to have two or three women at one time, sometimes two or three times a day. Kennedy made the word “orgy” almost a constitutional right to power. His brother Ted even took it a step further and left a ‘sweet young thing’ at the bottom of a lake, without even a filibuster.

And long before that, was the over-rated FDR, who had many an affair--one with Eleanor’s secretary, all while sitting in a wheelchair. Too bad YouTube wasn’t around then. Wheelchair Political Sex would have gotten a lot of Google.

So---instead of acting shocked, we should be discussing the real point: Who is trying to hurt John’s political career? Dick Morris has suggested the Clintons, and I believe he’s right.

Who knows? Maybe Obama had him on the short list for VP? Maybe the Clintons wanted payback.

If you read history and biographies, powerful men have grabbed whatever they wanted out of life, and most of the time that includes various sexual exploits.

All these politicians know when history is written, it won’t matter a lick what woman they bedded besides their wives, or who was gay, or who lied about it. It won’t even matter when they had themselves and their favorite strippers cloned.

But, what is amazing is just how many women who are married to these powerful men forgive the man and stay married to them. Most of these women can support themselves and their children very well, so why?

Take Hillary. She got five-course meals every night because her husband was President. If I were first lady and found out my husband was having an affair, and the choice was for ME to leave? I would have probably brought the finest girls from Vegas and set them up at his expense and then traveled the world…which is exactly what Hillary and Eleanor did at our expense.

If the real truth came out, the amount of money paid out to hush up illegitimate children and sexual affairs by famous men of power would probably surpass the national debt. Because as brilliant as men are…they see a beautiful or sexy woman, and they just can’t seem to help themselves. Most of the time, it’s kept a well guarded secret because so many of them do it.

Then there are the men who just use porn or prostitutes, or frequent the strip bars, thereby telling themselves they are not “having affairs” so that they can look in their wives eyes and say, “I love you honey” and actually think they mean it.

Remember Jimmy Carter's “lusting” confession in Playboy?

Men throughout history have set up the “just deny” old boy’s clubs, because, let’s face it… most of them need their wives. Bill Clinton needed Hillary. She literally saved his career when it was reported he was having an affair with Gennifer Flowers.

And it’s not only the Democrats that have affairs. Have both Bushes been faithful to their wives? Has John McCain? He left a wife who waited for him while he was in Vietnam, only to come back and marry a woman who could help put him in the White House.

And Obama? Do you think he’s been faithful all these years to his wife?

You might say their private lives should not even be talked about, and it used to be that way. But in a world where millions of women vote…it’s all a matter of trust. And if a man can lie to his wife, lying to voters is nothing.

And that’s why it’s important. And if there is one thing we need right now, it’s leaders we can trust.

John Edwards might be forgiven by his wife, his kids, his mistress, and even his dogs, but the jury is out on whether the American people will forgive him…nice bobo hair or not.

Nobody Knows: You CAN Eat Bugs and Live to Form Human Circles!

Nobody Knows: The Chinese never starved their people---they let them eat bugs! So, on that lovely note, here in no particular order are a few unknown particulars…mostly about the 2008 Olympic China games…

*****

Nobody Knows why no one is commenting on the fact that our Olympic American Team came out on the field in China, with a big white, Islamic Moon plastered over the little itty-bitty Olympic circles…on their shoulders for the world to see. Never mind that the ugly uniforms made them look like the sons and daughter of Oxford’s illuminati dream team of yacht club multimillionaires in poor polyester. And since everybody knows that the Islamic moon is the symbol of Muslims, and everybody knows that it’s “all about the oil,” why were the FOX NEWS commentators purposely NOT mentioning the concern of the Islamic Moon symbol on the lapel on their costume report this morning? Instead they were trying to redirect our “objections” to the hats. All Ralphie baby had to do was put an American flag on those hats and we would have all been at least satisfied that those were AMERICANS!

Ralph Lauren, you need to get off your Obama boat.

Nobody Knows that if you watched the men's Olympic gymnastics contest last night, it was obvious that the American team kicked everyone else’s butt, and it was also noted that the boy who made the most mistakes on the American team, was clearly…dare I mention it? Clearly of Asian decent. I was angry at the blatant misscorings…until I saw the Chinese boys actually break down and cry when winning the gold.

What? You cry when you win? You would have thought they had gotten a new life--

and speaking of lives...

Nobody Knows how come nobody has mentioned that since China had the “one child per family rule,” and that means that millions of girl fetuses are aborted, therefore the reason that all those boy soldiers could get out and play the drums and run in perfect formations…the fact that this grand army of men was being displayed as proof of China being superior to us, because it can make it’s people obey just about whatever it says, while our government keeps us all racially, culturally, and monetarily divided every single day, not wanting us to “nationalize” or feel pride in our country…just who do you think has a better chance of winning?…(whew!)

Remember Bill Clinton once proudly proclaimed, “We will not always be the big dog on the block!” And bless his heart, he made sure that the Chinese got more powerful by also making sure they got our nuclear and computers technology, which brings us to another....

Nobody Knows: Bill Clinton and the Bush family can take great pride in bringing China into superiority over us, but nobody knows why more credit was not given to Steven Spielberg for that unbelievable opening ceremony, since he worked on it with them for over a year. Let’s not even go into why the Chinese love American-made tall Chinese basketball players.

All I kept thinking was: Somebody should thank Thomas Edison…once again, cheated... How’s it feel to be up there with old Tom, Steven?

Nobody Knows if little George W. Bush learned to love bike riding in China because of mom and dad, who use to bike ride all over Beijing when he was ambassador. And nobody knows what they would look like now, had they continued with the sport.

And last but not least---since we now know that some of the fireworks at the Chinese opening we were seeing were computer enhanced, and that little girl singing was lip-synching, and the scoring on gymnastics were rigged, was else is being falsified?

Hey, when there is no mention of the obvious in our own news of these obvious facts…nobody knows just when our two countries began to merge…

Nobody Knows just when we will be getting tasty scorpions to eat in our own grocery stores. I'd say look for scorions on a stick by next spring...in time for Ralph's new Moon creasted fashions and our new President swearing in...

By then all the rulers of the world can say--- “Let them eat bugs!”

Pass the ketchup.

Nobody Flashes---Follow the Money

Nobody Flashes: Here's the story.

It's all about time. Read any "get rich" book and they will tell you the number one MOST important thing in life is time.

So...here's what's going on in my little neighborhood..St. Louis, like many mid-westerns towns, is losing mega-zillions of jobs, and my husband's might be next. He works mostly in the housing building business, and as you all know, that's not doing very well. He has worked for two companies since I have known him, and both of them were bought out by the very same multinational corporation, which goes around basically eliminating all competition, which it has done. All the major corporations jobs are gone here now, only to be eliminated.

I know, it hasn't hit everywhere, especially among those in the media who all have a job...but here in the mid-west, it's pretty bad. Unless of course you work for the government, but they are even complaining that they are not getting their usual raises.

So far, he has made it through the first cuts. But we figure it's only a matter of time...soooooo

That means that we have to get ready for this, which means I have to spend time trying to figure out some way to make money.

We are like just like millions of other Americans, who are being faced with this downsizing of the middle class, unfortunately, each hour I spend blogging, is an hour away from trying to sell stuff around the house, or find something or someway to get cars paid..etc...to get ready for what's seems to be coming.

I do not plan to lose my house, or my car...so that means I must think about MONEY..you know..that stuff that feeds you.

Now, since I'm having a hard time NOT writing, I'm going to go ahead and post little thoughts. If I get a moment and some time to write longer stuff...then I will.

I just wanted to let you know, that I'm not actually sitting around taking bubble baths, watching my hair grow, petting my dogs...like most Americans...if I want to keep my house, I'd better try to do something...

And since I haven't made any REAL money, for over eight years...I'm really not sure what to do.

So...in the meantime...I will keep up my Nobody's nonsense...don't ask me why.

"Why do birds suddenly appear...everytime.......you are near?

Just like me, they long to be...close to you."

That about explains it. I long to be close to you.