Post reporter Steve Fainaru, who’s been traveling with the platoon, writes that the Marines’s
\nassessment of Iraq, after hundreds of hours of operations over the past two months, “differ
\nsharply from those of the interim Iraqi government and the Bush administration, which have said
\nthat Iraq is on a certain — if bumpy — course toward peaceful democracy.” Fainaru also notes that
\nthe Marines are “struck by the difference between the way the war was being portrayed in the
\nUnited States and the reality of their daily lives.” <\/P>
\n
“I feel we’re going to be here for years and years and years. I don’t think
\nanything is going to get better; I think it’s going to get a lot worse. It’s going to be like a
\nPalestinian-type deal. We’re going to stop being a policing presence and then start being an
\noccupying presence. … We’re always going to be here. We’re never going to leave.”
—
\nLance Cpl. Edward Elston, 22, of Hackettstown, N.J. <\/B>
\n“Every day you read the articles in the States where it’s like, ‘Oh, it’s getting better and better.
\nBut when you’re here, you know it’s worse every day.”
— Lance Cpl. Jonathan Snyder,
\n22, of Gettysburg, Pa. <\/B><\/P>
\n
“We’re basically proving out that the government is wrong. We’re catching them in a
\nlie.”
— Lance Cpl. Alexander Jones, 20, of Ball Ground, Ga.<\/B><\/P>
\n
“Stuff’s going on here but they won’t flat-out say it. They can’t get into it” because of the
\nupcoming U.S. elections.
— Pfc. Kyle Maio, 19, of Bucks County, Pa.<\/B><\/P>
\n
“They can’t take care of themselves.” The Iraq National Guardsmen “can’t do anything. They
\njust do what we tell them to do.”
— Lance Cpl. Matthew Combs, 19, Cincinnati,
\nOhio<\/B><\/P>
\n
“Pretty much I think they just diverted the war on terrorism. I agree with the Afghanistan war
\nand all the Sept. 11 stuff, but it feels like they left the bigger war over there to come here. And
\nnow, while we’re on the ground over here, it seems like we’re not even close to catching frigging
\nbin Laden.”
— Lance Cpl. Snyder<\/B><\/P><\/BLOCKQUOTE>
\n
<\/P>
\n
Fainaru describes how one operation to search vehicles for insurgents and terrorist was
\nregarded by the platoon as little more than a bad joke. “This is what we call a dog-and-pony
\nshow,” he quotes Lance Cpl. Devin Kelly, 20, of Fairbanks, Alaska, as saying. “This is so you can
\nwrite in your paper how great our response is.” <\/P>
\n
Two Marines “boarded a small bus packed mostly with women and children,” Fainaru writes.
\nOne of them — Lance Cpl. Combs — “walked up the center aisle carrying his M-16 assault rifle,
\nthen got off, disgusted. ‘We just scared the living [expletive] out of a bunch of people,” he said.
\n‘That’s all we did.'”<\/P>
\n
Doubly mind-boggling is how willing these forthright Marines are to speak their mind. When
\nFainaur asked them if they worried about being punished for it, Cpl. Brandon Autin, 21, of New
\nIberia, La., replied: “We don’t give a crap. What are they going to do, send us to Iraq?”<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-eb","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}