Camp Iskandariyah/FOB Kalsu/Camp Doha, Kuwait The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit's Battalion Landing Team 1/2 has settled into Camp Iskandariyah, a collection of tents and trailers erected at al Musayyib Power Plant south of Baghdad, after a little over a month in-country. Each element of the MEU and the BLT, the combat arm of the expeditionary unit, has established its own rhythm. The Combat Operations Center, the camp's throbbing brain, directs them in their daily tasks -- convoys, patrols, raids, mess duty, trash removal. Day segues seamlessly into night in the windowless COC. Only the personnel changes. Patrols push out from Iskandariyah several times a day, around the clock, and fan out across Northern Babil province, the MEU's operating area. The Marines drive and observe; they hunt the suspicious and potentially dangerous. The men dull the tedium by chewing tobacco, smoking, and sipping from water bottles and Camelbacks. Because the engines growl too loudly to talk comfortably, most conversations in the Humvee are operational -- "maintain vehicle dispersion" or "Take a left. Left!"-- not personal. When no one shoots at the vehicles or detonates an IED -- improvised explosive device -- and no one crashes, that's a good patrol. To me, a civilian, a Marine patrol appears to be little more than a rolling target to anyone searching for one, I said to Lieutenant Scott Wiese. "That's the purpose of a patrol," he replied, "to close with and destroy the enemy with fire and maneuver." Patrols are supposed to draw out the bad guys, corner them, and then kill them. "We don't lose," Wiese asserted. The battle or the war, I asked? "We're at the tactical level," Wiese explained to me, patiently. "We just do what we're told." The next level is strategic, the generals. The top level is -- I interrupt him: "Political?" He nodded. The Marines continue to battle an elusive enemy they often can't distinguish from scared or indifferent local citizens. Marines are shot at and beset with exploding IEDs. They fire back with M-16s, artillery and mortars. They capture weapons, detain suspects, and occasionally discover IEDs planted along the roadside before they are detonated. Marines from the BLT have been wounded in combat and during routine operations. (The MEU doesn't have exact numbers.) A little more than a week ago, Lance Corporal Dustin Fitzgerald from Montgomery, Ohio, was killed when his Humvee rolled into a ditch. No one dwells openly on such losses; Marines simply plow into the next mission, the next day. Outside the Wire "What are our chances of surviving a blast in this?" a Marine in the back seat of a Humvee asked the driver as they rolled slowly through a stretch of blind curves on the way to Jurf-as-Sakhar, a city US forces avoid because they get shot at or IEDed whenever they pass through. Grunts walked ahead of the convoy scanning the roadside for IEDs. "Maybe four out five," Corporal Schramm, the driver, replied nonchalantly. Good odds, considering past experience. Civil Affairs Group Marines visited a Jurf-as-Sakhar health clinic that houses a half-finished birthing facility. The Army funded the project when it started, then cut off cash because of the attacks. The Marines promised local leaders they would resume support -- if they pledged to cooperate in the fight against violent insurgents. The clinic's director received the visiting Marines warily, but he received them nonetheless, a brave thing to do in such a town. The gravity of his decision was apparent to me in his tortured expression and noncommittal answers. "All we ask is that the people in this area treat us as friends," CAG Major Tom West said to the doctor. "It will take time," the doctor replied cautiously. Across the street lay the shell of Jurf-as-Sakhar's city council building. The shadowy forces that target Americans and the Iraqis who work with them torched it. The attackers scrawled graffiti on the concrete edifice -- "Death to Traitors!" "Yes to Jihad!" "Kill Every American and Foreigner!" The police station next door was razed. The police chief was executed 500 meters from the front door. Major West led a foot patrol up the city's main street, a textbook show of force by the Marines. Two columns of men, M-16s at the ready, marched briskly along the roadway. Shop owners and pedestrians watched.West and a few of the other Marines waved, and some people waved back, but the reception could not be called warm.