Amaury Kelly Kelly itibaren Gadugadmai Chopra, Uttarakhand, Hindistan
** spoiler alert ** In terms of hyperbole Morris is something extra. Here we have a nostalgic Vietnam vet with red beard and glasses longing for some action. The editor of the Soldier of Fortune magazine sends him out to cover some current conflicts in Beirut, Cambodia, El Salvador and a few other places. Morris then does his best to try and involve himself into the conflict at hand. He keeps asking local commanders for a rifle and to join their patrols, requests that are typically denied or stalled. In Beirut he is not allowed to visit the frontline, Thai soldiers stop him from "infiltrating" into Cambodia and the Myanmar drug lords he tries to arrange meetings with want nothing to do with him. The prose is mostly about throwing Vietnam-era acronyms around or describing the particulars of the camouflage patterns on the uniforms he borrows from his hosts. The rest of the book is spent mulling on how he is the only reporter that the local soldiers respect, how his girlfriend is prettier than everyone else's or how amazing the local food is ("we went for a cheeseburger"). The fate of this stellar account of investigative journalism is sealed by the introduction written by the former CIA director R. James Woolsey who goes on about the Soviet Union and its desire to arm the world to prevent people in the west from living in freedom and democracy. Morris also has his own theory on warfare; his many years in the business has convinced him that all wars in the world are different manifestations of one and the same; The war of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics against peace and prosperity in the rest of the world. Maaatrix!