With Deepest Regrets

The most profound event of my life occurred in the Iraqi desert in 1991 when the chemistry of my brain changed drastically as the folds of God's country ingested me.I was a United States Army sniper enveloped in an illegal and flawed assassination attempt of Saddam Hussein. During the course of the mission, my sniper partner died and I fell into a state of dementia after the desert wracked our cells of life. I was not supposed to survive; it is written. Every other soldier who embarked upon the mission is dead or is still missing.When I was found-accidently-next to dying by U.S. troops, I was told by high-ranking military officials to remain quiet about every aspect of the plot, beginning to end, and I have for twenty years. It is clear to me now that from the geneses of the operation, the U.S. government's intent was to manage the truth of the mission by way of predesigned fiction.Within the column of bitter memories that supply the blueprint of my life, the image most clear in my mind is of my rifle pointing to the nose of Hussein and paralysis extending down my right arm to my trigger finger. I go to that day quite often. That day possesses me. That day is a lingering spirit with a spontaneous personality of only one sadistic idea.I currently write these words in a vampire's chamber as I dwell in distant intensity within a wave of mutilation, counting the sins of the botched mission as form-filled static distorts my world, a languid twisted construction. The shades are pulled tight inside my quarters, and the radiant light of a laptop provides my consciousness. My shadow does not cast upon the walls, and my reflection does not appear in passing mirrors. A confluence of medication and alcohol dictates my temperament, and I am only able to function by way of these chemicals and my sheer desire to share my story-a story that was torn from the record-and make my life real again.Before you is the story of a troubled American soldier and a despotic dictator, who met under duress, and the consequences of their meeting. Hussein and I provide a circle of fate: there is suffering and there is terror and there is grief and there is war in our world, and we are both responsible for much of it.