Kwais wrestles apartheid-era machinery, flies on a sneaker, dreams of throwing down with Saddam

Tim Cavanaugh | June 30, 2006

Frequent commenter Kwais frequently entertains us with his tales of Iraq, and I've generally been inclined to believe him because kwais means "sweet" or "A-OK" in Arabic, which didn't seem like the kind of detail your garden variety bullshitter would come up with. It turns out, based on this Reno Gazette-Journal article about the boxer/commenter/warrior, that Kwais is not only a veteran of two different service branches the U.S. Marine Corps but a death-defying merc in the Red Zone. Bureaucratic irony alert: At a time when married soldiers with children are getting killed at a steady clip, Kwais, who spent 11 years training for combat, had to transition to civilian life in order to get into the shit:

"After 11 years of training and warfighting experience it was looking like I was not going to get the opportunity to serve my purpose, that millions of dollars had been spent training me to do," he wrote in an e-mail. "I was approached by others and they said that I could go over as a civilian, and I would still be fighting the bad guys, but not in uniform. So I got out of the Marine Corps, and went to work for some private security companies."

Whole article, with plenty of good adventures, as Kwais struggles to drive a "Casper," reviews the local airlines, and gives his perspective on the invasion. Thanks to Jennifer for the heads up.