War As A Game

Black Hawk Down Tells One Story; A Ranger Tells Another

(CBS) 
He had photos he took through the entire grueling guerrilla war and brought them out on his laptop.

In many of the pictures, we saw the evidence of violence. Snapshots showed the back of trucks and armored carriers that were laced with blood-red reminders of combat.

Chad and I looked at photos of his squad mates. John told us who made it back and who didn't.

He told us their names as we went from pictures of soldiers playing on the beach to pictures of bone shattered like porcelain.

There were times, John said, when our troops didn't have backup. Support "didn't show up until after Clinton had to go public," he told us.

"If it bleeds, it leads," was John's critique, justified sometimes, of the media. What he believes the media missed are his stories, meeting the people who live there, trading with locals and playing with children. We saw pictures of the toys he'd bought, souvenirs of the original humanitarian reasons for American intervention.

Rangers don't forget their own. The Special Operations Warrior Foundation is a non-profit organization that helps provide scholarships and educational counseling to children who have lost parents serving in Special Ops. To their credit, NovaLogic donates part of the proceeds from the sales of Black Hawk Down to the SOWF.

NovaLogic calls it "a bit of a mission."

They have a mission and I have figured out what's got its talons lodged in my mind. Happiness and horror, side by side.

War as a game and games as war. From smile to shrapnel.