Over There A thought occurred...

Over There
A thought occurred to me as Scream's squad and their obnoxious prisoner rendezvoused with those escort vehicles: Do you suppose the insurgents are able to impersonate Americans with captured clothes, weapons and vehicles? Since we resourceful Yanks pulled that stuff all the time against the Nazis and Commies (so the movies tell us), it would be interesting to see if our military is infiltrated in the same fashion. But I digress. That was one honkin' war of nerves between the squad's pompous young captive (his every other word was "Infidel!") and the intelligence colonel hell-bent on finding a cache of stolen Stinger missiles. After observing their prisoner stand up under the torture of the stress position arms extended, knees bent, hell interminable Dim wondered, "How do you fight an enemy who isn't afraid to die?" From the colonel, answer came there obvious: Find something the enemy fears more than dying. (Ask a stupid question.) In the insurgents case, it was the very real possibility that his 15-year old sister would be "raped until she turned black" by Pakistanis. I don't know about you, but that would get my tongue wagging. Suffice to say this cracked the lad, who revealed that the Stingers were stashed on a farm. Although I was slightly surprised the colonel who reminded me of a brighter, beefier Ollie North agreed to not harm the family who lived there, I was curious to see how he'd confiscate the contraband without bloodshed. It was soon apparent he'd made the tactical decision to lie his ass off. The last we saw of the farmers was from the perspective of the air-to-ground missile that crashed into the barn and blew them to teeny-weeny smithereens. Back in Germany, Bo showed some stubbornness of his own by refusing to take any more morphine for his severed leg. While his withdrawal wasn't as heinous as the one in say, Ray, all the nasty hallmarks sweats, screaming, self-pity, vomit  were there. Why would Bo abandon a cushy narcotic recovery in favor of several days of absolute hell? Because, as his wife told the doc, he needed something to fight. It makes for an interesting contrast to the alcohol-fueled depression that's gripped B.D. recently in the "Doonesbury" comic strip. I can only imagine the depression that will befall Dim when he learns how irresponsibly his loose, boozy missus has been behaving. I know she's a one-dimensional character, and that I'm being manipulated, but I guess I don't care. The sight of Eddie sitting alone at the dining-room table waiting for his mom to return from her latest one-night stand was gut-wrenching. A tear can say a thousand words.  G. J. Donnelly