Reply #2: FUBAR [View All]

[oldhat]

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/040712fa_fact

Debbie watched the waitress clear our plates, then she leaned forward to tell about a night in July, after Carl’s return, when they went with some friends to the Afterhours Enlisted Club at Fort Benning. Carl had a few drinks, Debbie said, and started railing at the disk jockey, shouting, “I want to hear music about people blowing people’s brains out, cutting people’s throats!” Debbie continued, “I said, ‘Carl. Shut up.’ He said, ‘No, I want to hear music about shit I’ve seen!’” Carl listened to Debbie’s story with a loving smile, as though she were telling about him losing his car keys. “I don’t remember that,” he said, laughing. Debbie said, “That was the first time I heard him say stuff about seeing people’s brains blown out. Other times, he just has flashbacks—like, he sits still and stares.” Carl laughed again. “Really, though, I’m fine,” he said. Beside him in the booth, Debbie shook her head without taking her eyes from mine and exaggeratedly mouthed, “Not fine. Not fine.”

...

On the day we were talking, the Times ran a page-one story on Army snipers in Baghdad. A sniper who had killed seven men in a day was quoted as saying that he felt no remorse. “He’s got the thousand-yard stare,” Knox said, tapping the accompanying photograph with his index finger. “Go back and find him in fifteen years.”