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

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.