WHEN SEMPER FI MEANS FAITHFUL TO THE TRUTH

Carlos Perez says he was so angry about 9/11 he quit his job as a firefighter and joined the Marines. "To be honest, I just wanted to take revenge." He's now in Iraq in a platoon known as the "81s" -- so named for its 81 mm. mortar rounds -- fighting with the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marine Regiment based in Iskandariyah, 30 miles southwest of Baghdad.

The 20-year-old former firefighter has had a revelation. A front-page story in The Washington Post this morning quotes him as saying "this is a whole different thing. We're supposed to be looking for al Qaeda. They're the ones who are supposedly responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks. This has no connection at all to Sept. 11 ..."

Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who's been traveling with the platoon, writes that the Marines's assessment of Iraq, after hundreds of hours of operations over the past two months, "differ sharply from those of the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration, which have said that Iraq is on a certain -- if bumpy -- course toward peaceful democracy." Fainaru also notes that the Marines are "struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the United States and the reality of their daily lives."

Here's what members of platoon "81" told him:

"I feel we're going to be here for years and years and years. I don't think anything is going to get better; I think it's going to get a lot worse. It's going to be like a Palestinian-type deal. We're going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an occupying presence. ... We're always going to be here. We're never going to leave."
-- Lance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J.

"Every day you read the articles in the States where it's like, 'Oh, it's getting better and better. But when you're here, you know it's worse every day."
-- Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder, 22, of Gettysburg, Pa.

"We're basically proving out that the government is wrong. We're catching them in a lie."
-- Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga.

"Stuff's going on here but they won't flat-out say it. They can't get into it" because of the upcoming U.S. elections.
-- Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa.

"They can't take care of themselves." The Iraq National Guardsmen "can't do anything. They just do what we tell them to do."
-- Lance Cpl. Matthew Combs, 19, Cincinnati, Ohio

"Pretty much I think they just diverted the war on terrorism. I agree with the Afghanistan war and all the Sept. 11 stuff, but it feels like they left the bigger war over there to come here. And now, while we're on the ground over here, it seems like we're not even close to catching frigging bin Laden."
-- Lance Cpl. Snyder

Fainaru describes how one operation to search vehicles for insurgents and terrorist was regarded by the platoon as little more than a bad joke. "This is what we call a dog-and-pony show," he quotes Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska, as saying. "This is so you can write in your paper how great our response is."

Two Marines "boarded a small bus packed mostly with women and children," Fainaru writes. One of them -- Lance Cpl. Combs -- "walked up the center aisle carrying his M-16 assault rifle, then got off, disgusted. 'We just scared the living [expletive] out of a bunch of people," he said. 'That's all we did.'"

Doubly mind-boggling is how willing these forthright Marines are to speak their mind. When Fainaur asked them if they worried about being punished for it, Cpl. Brandon Autin, 21, of New Iberia, La., replied: "We don't give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?"