Buying Hookers in South America??

So I have to ask.., "Who Knew?"Well that is a tricky question if you use fuzzy math.

You see, the governmental security operations (and most other departments) have slowly - or quickly - phased into a mercenary-minded attitude of hired thugs and idiots.

I assure you - I used to be one. I was formerly a Blackwater Diplomatic Security Service Specialist.

Basically, to be qualified, we run around the woods of Moyock, NC on 5,000 acres of Eric Prince's property he purchased through his daddys trust fund.

We train in every type of hand-to-hand combat, assaults, and counter-terrorism. Somebody get me some steroids - I feel a need to start swinging my stick. LOL

While here, we all play Rambo and get qualified with a virtual bevy of ways to shoot, kill, or capture the enemy; all in the name of becoming a Diplomatic Security Specialist.

They call it the DSS program. Look it up, it's on their website.

Many of the Government 'real-timers' have the background and training for the position through their years of college and their undergraduate studies like: Philosophy. History, Communications, Psychology, and a host of other party majors.

But hey, give them a gun for their hard work drinking everyone else under the table and holding the school record for assinine behavior.

these scandals make me cry and laugh at the same time.

YOu have senior company Directors that have enslaved women from Eastern Europe for their own purpose of becomeing sex slaves. You have cover ups by - go figure- senior staff that used to be senior officers in the military.

That honor code of protecting your team just does not hold water when they are so corrupt and evil that it makes a person sick to know what they cover up and get away with.

There was a general in the eighties that was the Commander of the base in Florida. He ran a prostitution ring, and forced incoming female officers to become 'dates' for his friends.

Guess what?? He was discovered and punished.

Forced early retirement. - Full pension.

Ouch!!

Ask those women if he should have been tossed in jail - image be damned!

Back to my original point.

There are so many ways that the government is looking the other way with things like hookers and sexual slavery,

but hey,

companies like Dyncorp have guys who bring briefcases full of cash to capital hill to get the attention and favors of our non-corrupt legislators to assure their deals go down perfectly.

I can give you the names of the men carrying the money. Dumb as hell, but know how to do a bribe.

Makes us honest businessmen feel good about honesty.

Hookers in South America??

That is comical regarding the lack of ethics cancer that is pervasive in the governmental body.

J

Winning the 'War'

Okay. I have been gone a while due to my 'clearance level' B-S. Now that I am working for myself (and of course, the soldiers) I can say what I really think.

To wit-

How does one win a war that they cannot even admit is a war?

This 'operation' is being controlled by bureaucrats from the State department (which I think is the most corrupt and useless government agency since Tammany Hall).

I have been on the inside for a long time, having seen the processes for approval for anything. I keep trying to tell myself that somebody somewhere knows more than what I see, in order to keep my faith, but time and again it never materializes, and turns into the exact final logical conclusion.

If the US military has to get approval from all the other NATO nations for any type of mission, and you get one vote against, then explain how anything gets done.

Last year, I was up in the mountains at a certain small FOB (Forward Operating Base), and any mission had to get approval from another NATO military partner - even if we knew exactly where and what the Taliban was doing.

Well, most times, this other military would say yes to the operation and go through all the planning, then within the last 24 hours before launch, they would stand down; effectively losing the upper hand against the enemy and letting them live to fight another day. Not to mention the cost and aggravation of the men involved.

Sorry, I am going a bit off course on a tangent, but the story remains the same, whether it is State Department or NATO.

Let me be EXTEMELY clear; these enemies are not going to lay down arms, nor are they going to ever be our friends. Unfortunately, the State Department eggheads think if they play Santa Claus with enough of our taxpayer dollars, they will eventually turn against their hardcore believers and start liking us, the infidels.

What a laugh!

The only laughing I see is them with their hands out and all smiles and handshakes for the big shots (or big shits) from the Government. They take as much as the government is willing to give, and laugh all the way to the bank, then they share with the enemy; because if our soldiers keep dying, then they can act as if they are a needed asset, trying to help.

In other words, they play both sides of the fence. Too much for a State Department official to wrap their brainiac thought process around.

Here are some great facts:

1) Since we do not escort the convoys that carry our supplies (this was an attempt to do war on the cheap), we now pay a bribe to the warlords EVERY time the shipments go through. And then they take whatever they want while en-route. Try finding a vehicle that came to the base with the battery or any fluids still in it. Do you think the money does not go back to the enemy?? So in actuality, the war cost us much more, but it is a trick of accounting.

We spend upward of $8 thousand dollars to get fuel through Medullah Kahns' territory each time a convoy goes through. Add that up. It is in the hundreds of millions of dollars already. that is just one warlord. Fuel shipments are routinely 10% short. PX supplies can be found every Saturday at the Haji Bazaar (With the Bar Codes still on the packaging) - amazing. We allow theft under our noses and they sell it back to us in full view of the military.

What do you think would happen if their friends from the movie industry came by and saw that??

Yes, they are most definitely NOT laughing at us all the way to the bank.

2) We pay the Afghan government land lease fees for every base we have here.

Sure, you might think, "Well, it is their land.", but then you find out what they are charging for worthless desert.

A small base commands about $90k USD every month. (and we have over 200 bases around the country). Many bases are 10 times that amount.

Now strap yourselves in for the really funny part (I don't want any of you hurt by laughing so hard you fall out of your chairs)...,

They pay the Ministry of EDUCATION for all that land.

I repeat, The Ministry of Education.

Yes, my friends; they pay a department of a corrupt government that is the most non-existent in all of both the civilized and uncivilized world.

The country with the least amount of education seems to have every last piece of worthless land saved for the children of the future - whatever cool poster wording that falls into our beloved governmental bureaucratic minds.

More and more, I think our government is full of mentally challenged individuals. No..., stop, that is insulting to the truly challenged. These bureaucrats actually think they are smarter than the rest of us common sense types.

I know this from years of having to eat with and listen to them postulate about how they know what is best and how they had a great meeting with a tribal elder who they gave out millions of dollars to. WOW!!

Example: they routinely go into villages and valleys doing "Provincial Reconstruction efforts" - a cute name that is meaningless. Reconstruction means that we are rebuilding something we destroyed - which we are not.

It is a bribe scheme to get villagers on our side (which they will never be - they just want to be left alone and not pledge allegiance to either side).

So we promise them something useful, say, a well. A water well.

Well, as soon as one villager gets one on his property or near it, then the infighting starts and we have to give them another well, and another, and another, until everyone has a well to call their own, even though it all comes from the same water table, which cannot sustain 5, 6, 10 wells in the same mountain village. So all we are doing is appeasing their pride, but minimizing their individual well outputs.

Oh yes, I forgot, the individual wells are costing us about $1.1 to $1.5 million each.

All to produce the same amount of water that one sole well would produce.

Now, this is only wells; the same goes on for everything. We build schools that are never going to be used. We hire Afghan contractors to do construction and they have never done construction. Only to put millions of dollars into select privileged families pockets.

Every last time we give them a contract - I mean every last time, we have to tear it apart and redo the work.

Thank you taxpayers!

3) Did you know the US Military CONDONES fraud? Every saturday, we allow the Afghan local vendor into the base to sell their goods for about 3 hours. Well, if you have ever been to these bazaars, you would see every last movie and tv series bootlegged and sold for pennies.

Even Software. Primavera? $4000? Not here. $10 dollars.

All of the units are given funding to rent vehicles to get around the base. Typical passenger behicles like Toyota SUV's.

Well, most are stolen from America, and we do not even check the VIN's, but rent them from every last bogus company here doing business.

Let me repeat - the US Military rents stolen vehicles from America from the contractors here on base, whether they are US, Turkish, or Afghan.

Now, the vehicles they rent that are not stolen; well those are in a seperate class all by themselves.

Let's say you are a retired US Colonel who happens to know the system and the people awarding the contracts.

Outstanding! You can win a contract you had no business in and overcharge the government all you want, due to your friend writing the contract up specifically to your tastes.

Currently, Dyncorp, a defense contractor, is leasing vehicles (Toyota Hilux Pick-up trucks) for $3,600 a month.

Yes, $3,600 a month. For a vehicle they can buy for about $25,000.

And they will lease them for 2-3 years, thus paying about 3x the value on each vehicle.

I know a contractor who offered the same EXACT vehicle with maintenance contract for about $2,700 a month, and they were refused. It pays to be a retired military.

They are not even supposed to be in positions to get contract due to their past, but who cares?? Nobody checks.

Heaven forbid we send a retired U.S. Colonel and all his cronies to jail.

This is the first in many installments of my viewpoint and darker truths.

Can you handle it?

Holiday Cheer From The Sandbox

Belated Merry Christmas and happy New Year to everyone. We work through the holidays because the machine that is the military does not sleep. I will say that they did a great job on the food at the DFACs for Christmas; ham, roast beast, green eggs and yams.
My one complaint about the DFAC is the rules they put on the meat. They cannot serve it until the temperature of the beast reaches 150 degrees on the inside, thus turning it into shoe leather. I guess that one in a million chance of someone getting salmonella means changing the rules and ruining the meals. The same is true with the eggs. We now have REAL eggs here, not powdered (YAY??) but they make the cooks break the yolk and turn the egg into a piece of rubber.
Work is okay, once you get over the government way of doing things. I could write a novel on the inefficiencies of governmental projects and paperwork, but who would read it. We like to call it the backwards universe over here, and it does not get better with time.
I am about to go on my end of year R+R, so I am jumping out of my skin. I cannot wait ot go somewhere and do nothing but see the sights and get waited on.
Did I mention the beer? I definitely cannot wait for that. The best night is the first night we land in Dubai. nobody has touched any alcohol for 3+ months, so it takes about 2 beers to make us giggly and goofy. that, and our first clean-water shower in months is a great combination. Dubai is noe of the greatest cities on earth, and I recommend everyone visit at least one time. It sure is a fantastic point to jump into from a warzone. Night and day difference.
More later

Working too much

I work too much.

This picture of me was taken friday night at about 10 pm. Proof that we work till we drop. They told me my hand was still moving the mouse and I was down for over an hour in that position.

How funny!

That is our makeshift office tent with the plywood desk and the sand covered computer.

This should dispell any rumors that I am secretly living the good life in Monte Carlo.

Friday nights in crazyland

So I am sitting here in the office on a friday night, having just showered and feeling like a wet rat who was just pulled from a putrid Afghan river. I'm really not sure if the smell of the water is better than my flea-infested armpits. lol We have these showers that are built out of a tent, and they are a group sort of thing, so one must be comfortable with himself. The group shower isn't the worst part of it; it's the men from the other countries who check out your privates and you wonder if they are comparing or something.

The toilets are interesting also, as they sit up a few feet off the ground like a pidgeon perch (see pics). One pic is my bunkspace. We have some pretty nice sunrises every morning when the sand isn't blinding us. We still do not have any trucks to get around, so we walk through the sand all day. Some days up to 15 kilometers. The last surge of troops that came through our camp packed up half the camp and took it with them. It looked like a tornado hit after they left. I must hand it to them, they certainly can scrounge. We caught one soldier dragging a very large air conditioner (ours) down the road behind his humvee with a chain. I could write a sitcom with some of the things I see here, and especially some of the personalities.

The burn pit at the back of the camp is starting to get everybody sick every day, because the more troops that arrive, the larger the burn must be for the trash. Most days, the wind blows out of the mountains and take the ash right down into our lungs and eyes. People are crying and nauseous all the time.

The good thing about that is it makes the food taste edible. If you go into the chow hall already nauseous, how much worse can it get? We used to just cry from the food we ate, now we have a medical excuse.

Actually, the food has gotten much better, thanks to some creative work by our fine chefs. Still do not know what I am eating half the time, but it goes down okay.

On a better note, I'm off to Thailand in 11 days, so I have to push hard to get everything ready for my absence.

We are now calling our choppers the 'Flaming Rocks' because of the way they come out of the sky when they get shot down. These Russian choppers are real crates. When you ride in one, you really pucker your asscheeks, and not just from the enemy, but the bird itself. Many of the men choose to go out on Mil-Air flights, but that is a hassle. You have to wait up all night for an opening and they only fly you in the middle of the night. I choose the flaming rocks.

More later.

Jim

I'm Back!

I just got back from R+R this week and the place is starting to feel all homey. NOT! Things have gotten a little less crazy here, but we are still adding troops and contractors. We have over a thousand contractors here now with us, and that is a lot of contracting. lol The weather is about 110 - 120 every day, but I think it is going to get a bit cooler soon, so we are all looking forward to that. We had a chopper crash last month that killed 18 of our people, but most news stations do not report contractor deaths.
We may be moving up to the north in a couple months, which I am dreading. It is up in the mountains, so the snow gets pretty deep and does not stop. We still have tent living and bad food, but I am finally getting used to it again.
The best part of coming back here is planning the next R+R. We have to submit for the next one shortly after we return so they can plan staffing requirements. It is fun to think about the different places to go or deciding what I want to see. I am out of days in the US so I have to spend the next R+R somewhere else in the world. I have thought about the south of France, Casablanca and Marrekesh, or Bangkok, Thailand. Who knows? I go again at the end of October, so Europe is going to be too cold by then for any fun.
Gotta run, write back and tell me what is going on in your lives.

Raining Fire

Yesterday was a very interesting day. One of our contractor helos took off from our LZ and just started to head out when the external fuel tank erupted in flames. It may have been shot at by a sniper or something.
Well the quick thinking Russian chopper pilot cut the tank loose right over the edge of our camp. so it was literally raining fire yesterday. when the fuel tank hit the ground, it went off like a roman candle and we all thought the whole chopper went down.
Almost landed on our heads.
Nobody injured, so that was a good day.
We are working so much and there is so much action here, that we all barely get any sleep anymore.
We're all stoked up on 'Rip-Its' for the caffeine rush, we all drink about 10 of them a day, but it is tearing me up inside.
I go from feeling like there is a brick on my stomach, to the other extreme, which is unmentionable.
I am still walking all day long, marching and hiking between camps through the desert. It sucks.
This desert heat here is nothing like Baghdad was, it is more unforgiving, and will eat you alive and the wind will blow sand over you when you drop. I keep thinking that all the sand here should really be in China by now for as much as the wind blows it through the air.
My feet are swelling, hurting, and getting any and all kinds of athletes foot (Yes, I know, too much information, but this is my sounding board here, danggummit!). I spray every chance I get to keep it to a minimum, but some guys are really stupid; they don't take care of there feet at all.
Many have to get their toenails yanked off when the leave here from the extent of their infections.
We are now sharing a very severe bronchial infection that has run through the camp. It is pretty serious, men are dropping out (passing out) and ending up in the Cash (combat area support hospital).
Last month it was pinkeye, affecting half the camp.
Luckily, I did not get that one.

So far this summer, we have had 3 heart attacks, 1 stroke, and over 20 heat strokes from healthy men of all ages. A few marines have dropped out from the heat too.

They tried serving us ice cream a few times and it was more like soup when we got it, but we all appreciate the efforts

I am missing ice and cold drinks so badly that I have taken to using the scraps of ice they have at the lunch line to keep the veggies from spoiling. It is non-potable, but I just don't give a crap anymore. there is nothing better than a cold Coke after walking about 10 miles in 120 degree heat. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking antibiotics for that when I get home. lol

Well, thats about it. More to come.