title: Ask Forgiveness Not Permission: The True Story of an Operation in Pakistan's Badlands
author: Howard Leedham
description: "A powerful weaponboth for helping and giving permission to returning warriors to be honest about their own struggles, and also to help those of us who have not been to war to understand the depth of the struggle of the warriors whom we wish to support."  The White Rhino Report.blogspot.com
zlib_text: CHAPTER ONE
  
  
  December 2001
  
  
  I became what I am today at the age of twelve, on a frigid overcast day in the
  winter of 1975. I remember the precise moment, crouching behind a crumbling
  mud wall, peeking into the alley near the frozen creek. That was a long time
  ago, but it’s wrong what they say about the past, I’ve learned, about how you
  can bury it. Because the past claws its way out. Looking back now, I realize I
  have
  
  
  been peeking into that deserted alley for the last twenty-six years. One day
  last summer, my friend Rahim Khan called from Pakistan. He asked me to come
  see him. Standing in the kitchen with the receiver to my ear, I knew it wasn’t
  just Rahim Khan on the line. It was my past of unatoned sins. After I hung up,
  I went for a walk along Spreckels Lake on the northern edge of Golden Gate
  Park. The earlyafternoon sun sparkled on the water where dozens of miniature
  boats sailed, propelled by a crisp breeze. Then I glanced up and saw a pair of
  kites, red with long blue tails,