In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country. It's about being a man. And it's about love as well as hate.
You have to slow your heart rate, stay calm. You have to shoot in between your heartbeats.
I don't have to psych myself up, or do something special mentally - I look through the scope, get my target in the cross hairs, and kill my enemy, before he kills one of my people.
You're not just going out there, maybe sacrificing your own life. There's also sacrifices still going on at home. You can serve in the military and have a good marriage, but you just need to be aware of it so you can take those steps to take care of it.
I'm just trying to be the me that I am and not all of this other crap. I just want to be the family man, and if somehow I can make the money to get my ranch and get the hell away from everybody else, that would be awesome.
Savage, despicable evil. That's what we were fighting in Iraq. That's why a lot of people, myself included, called the enemy 'savages.' There really was no other way to describe what we encountered there.
