(SCENE:\u00a0 The cockpit of a US Navy F-18 Super Hornet strike fighter.\u00a0 The plane, loaded with JDAM precision-guided bombs, flies through the clear desert skies as the camera closes in on the PILOT).<\/p>\n
PILOT:\u00a0 “Cobra Two Five, On Station”<\/p>\n
CONTROLLER (flying in an AWACS plane over the eastern Mediterranean):\u00a0 “Welcome to Syria, Cobra Two Five.\u00a0 We’ve got an air support call from “ABU”.\u00a0 Go ahead, Abu”<\/p>\n
ABU: (mildly distorted, on the radio) “This is Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish.\u00a0 We are trying to advance through Al-Khebab, and there is a group of government tanks blocking the way”.<\/p>\n
PILOT:\u00a0 “Copy, I’m five minutes out…hey, wait.\u00a0 Abu Fuad Hadji Al-Ramshish?<\/p>\n
ABU:\u00a0 “That is correct”<\/p>\n
PILOT:\u00a0 “Didn’t a bunch of Marines call me in on an ground support strike against <\/em>you near Fallujah back in 2005?\u00a0 Weren’t you an Al Quaeda commander?”<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “Why yes!\u00a0 I thought you sounded familiar, Cobra Two Five!\u00a0 Call sign…er…Mobster?”<\/p>\n PILOT:\u00a0 “Er, yes.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 So you’ve switched…”<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “Oh, merciful heavens, no.\u00a0 Your bomb missed me, I left Iraq, I got promoted, did a tour in Afghanistan…”<\/p>\n PILOT:\u00a0 “Hey, me too…”<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “…and now I’m here”.<\/p>\n PILOT:\u00a0 “Well, I’ll be”.<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “Small world, isn’t it?”<\/p>\n PILOT:\u00a0 “And now I’m flying air support for…uh…”<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “For me, an Al Quaeda operative.\u00a0 That is correct.”<\/p>\n PILOT:\u00a0 “Huh.\u00a0 OK.\u00a0 Well, Cobra Two Five, I’m at the IP”<\/p>\n CONTROLLER:\u00a0 “Weapons Free, Cobra Five, clear to go hot”<\/p>\n ABU:\u00a0 “Good shooting, Mobster.\u00a0 And then die, American infidel pig dog”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (SCENE:\u00a0 The cockpit of a US Navy F-18 Super Hornet strike fighter.\u00a0 The plane, loaded with JDAM precision-guided bombs, flies through the clear desert skies as the camera closes in on the PILOT). PILOT:\u00a0 “Cobra Two Five, On Station” CONTROLLER (flying in an AWACS plane over the eastern Mediterranean):\u00a0 “Welcome to Syria, Cobra Two Five.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,9],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-38041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-and-peace","category-war-on-terror","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38041"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38096,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38041\/revisions\/38096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}