SPAGHETTI MAN

🎭 SPAGHETTI MAN (REFRAIN)
We ride with his ghost through the checkpoints and scans,
His rig in our mirror, his blood on our hands.
No line in the ledger, no ink in the van—
But we swear on the dust: they buried that man.

MSR Tampa, 2004. Elements roll past the remains of a previous ambush.

(As told in Silverstein Mode)

We rolled down Route Tampa with dust in our teeth,
With rifles and radio static beneath.
The mission was simple: from BIAP to south,
But war has a way of re-routing your mouth.

We checked our manifest, numbers were fine,
Then one extra truck snuck into the line.
No badge, no call sign, no questions were asked—
Just steel in formation, just one of the task.

Through checkpoints we drifted, our seats full of sweat,
The sun burning holes in the things we forget.
Then BOOM came the mortars, and POP came the lead,
And whispers of death brushed the roof of our head.

I played the sheepdog, I ran to the front,
I stayed in the road and I bore the full brunt.
An IED screamed, a dog dashed in fright,
Then two semis swerved in the chaos and light.

The one up ahead hit the pup in the dash,
And my fists hit the glass with a bang and a crash.
He weaved to the right, then he swerved to the left,
Then an IED took what little was left.

We stopped by his rig when the kill zone was past,
Just one final glance, one echo, one gasp.
The door had been blown, the cab was all red—
And there in the seat sat the strings of the dead.

No face.
No ID.
No tag to be scanned.
Just silence and smoke and spaghetti and sand.

We reached Scania. We counted again.
Each truck was accounted for, ten outta ten.
No one was missing, no manifest lied—
Except for the one who had nobody to sign.

One of our boys said, “Wait, how can this be?
There’s guts on the road, but it’s all clean on our sheet?”
And someone else said, “That’s just how it goes.”
Then they reached for a burger with sand on their clothes.

We never found out who that driver once was.
No badge. No hometown. No prayers. No fuss.
But late in the smoke, with a laugh or a curse—
We remember Spaghetti Man, riding the hearse.

He wasn’t on paper.
He wasn’t in plan.
But we saw him.
We knew him.
We buried that man.

Wreckage from a fuel convoy attack. This was a common sight on Route Tampa.

🎩 DR. SEUSS MODE:
🪦 “They Buried That Man”

They buried that man, though he wasn’t on file.
They buried that man in government style.
No name on his tag, no form in the stack,
No fingerprint scan and no next-of-kin back.

He wasn’t on roll calls, he wasn’t on lists,
He wasn’t saluted, he wasn’t dismissed.
But still there he sat, with his limbs in a jam,
Just strings in a seat—and they buried that man.

They buried that man without dog tags or charts,
Without knowing his birthday or favorite parts.
They buried him quiet, beneath desert tan,
And whispered a joke as they buried that man.

“Who was he?” one asked. “Just some phantom or ghost?”
“Or maybe,” said one, “just a casualty post.”
“But our count is all clean, so no reason to scan…”
Then they shrugged, and they ate, and they buried that man.

🎤 CARLIN MODE: ENGAGED.
Let me tell ya, I just read the most twisted, gut-punching, beautifully psychotic bedtime story for adults who’ve seen too much and filed too little. And lemme tell ya—it wasn’t no nursery rhyme. It was a combat report wrapped in a Dr. Seuss death certificate and dipped in government-issued denial.

WTF Did I Just Read?

You read about a guy—Spaghetti Man—who died in your convoy, died in your peripheral vision, died in your rearview mirror, but didn’t exist on paper.

“No badge. No ID. No tag to be scanned.”

That’s right. Bureaucratic invisibility. The man literally ghost-rode his way into the war and out of the world—with more meat on the road than metadata in the file.

And the kicker?
Nobody gave a damn.

They shrugged, they counted trucks, they ate burgers with sand on their sleeves, and said:

“That’s just how it goes.”

Ohhh, that line right there?
That’s the motto of the military-industrial complex. That’s America’s customer service tagline for the dead:

“That’s just how it goes.”

Let’s Break This Down, Carlin-Style:

🛻 A man joins your convoy unannounced.
🚫 No orders. No ID. No name.
💥 He explodes. Literally.
📋 You count trucks like everything’s fine.
🍔 Then somebody eats lunch while the man’s DNA becomes part of the asphalt.

And then, in Seuss Mode, you sweeten the war crime with rhyme:

“No fingerprint scan and no next-of-kin back.”
“They shrugged, and they ate, and they buried that man.”

Holy shit, that’s a children’s poem about administrative homicide.

So What’s the Moral?

This ain’t just about Spaghetti Man.
This is about all the bodies that don’t make it to the ledger.
The ones who die in systems that never cared to remember them.
The ones who fought wars not just without backup—but without even being logged in.

This is what happens when the war machine gets efficient. It doesn’t need names, it needs throughput. It needs dead guys who don’t file complaints.

And you better believe some civilian contractor got paid triple overtime to lose that file.

Final Analysis?

You just read the VA’s idea of an unlisted ingredient.
You just read poetic casuistry soaked in diesel fuel and cognitive dissonance.
You just read the only war story where the ghost is more real than the guys doing the counting.

And you know what?

They buried that man.
Not because they cared.
Because it was easier than answering questions.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go scream into an empty duffel bag and invoice the Pentagon for emotional damages.
Pass the sandburger. This story ain’t done.

🎙️ COHN MODE: ENGAGED.
—he adjusts his tie, straightens the mic, and lets the full weight of constitutional indignation settle into the room like a closing argument made of cinderblocks and subpoenas—

“Your Honor… Members of this committee… Let the record reflect that a man was buried.”

Not processed.
Not cataloged.
Not identified by dental record or biometric scan.

Buried.

And not because the system failed to recognize him,
—but because the system never intended to.

“No badge. No ID. No tag to be scanned.”

You see, in the eyes of bureaucracy, that’s not a tragedy.
That’s a clean transaction.
A casualty without paperwork is a gift to the ledger.
No death benefits.
No congressional hearings.
No photo in a senator’s speech.

Just sand.
Just red.
Just meat and metal.

Now let’s talk about intent.

Because under Mens Rea, we are obligated to examine the state of mind of the parties involved.

And what do we find?

• A manifest that comes up clean.

• A count that ends where it started.

• A burger unbothered by the stench of undeclared death.

Your Honor, that’s not incompetence.
That’s design.

This is “strategic unpersoning.”

The war machine doesn’t misplace people like Spaghetti Man by accident.
It requires people like him.
Expendable. Untraceable. Disposable.

Ghosts don’t call lawyers.

“They shrugged, and they ate, and they buried that man.”

Well I’m not shrugging.
And I ain’t eating.

I’m objecting. On every count.

📜 PRECEDENT?
Let’s start with Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004):
The Court held that a U.S. citizen cannot be held indefinitely without due process.

But what happens when a non-citizen, or a non-person by administrative standard, dies in a war zone with no documentation?

No habeas. No appeal. No notification clause.
Just oblivion by omission.

Baghdad’s edge. Smoke rising, mosque watching. The calm never meant safety.