Inside the Wire During their downtime, the Marines sleep, watch movies on DVD, play computer games, and use email -- when it's working. They munch goodies mailed by family and friends and read magazines. Maxim and FHM are immensely popular as are raunchier rags that circulate on the down-low (officially, porn is banned). At the start of the deployment back at Camp Virginia in Kuwait, the grunts from BLT 1/2's Charlie Company played softball at night, after the desert heat broke. The Iraqi translators used to play pick-up soccer on a lot next to Camp Iskandariyah's chow hall. But with the persistent threat of mortar attacks, there's not much outdoor recreation to speak of, though Corpsmen and Marines occasionally shoot hoops on a cramped court outside the first aid station. There's not a great deal of mixing between Iraqis and Marines, but there is some. Iraqi translators accompany Marine patrols. Some units have their own dedicated linguists and cordial, even warm, relationships have developed. I find 22-year-old Sgt. Josh Cannon in the translators' tent one night hunkered over a chessboard with Said, an affable man about Cannon's age, an excellent English speaker, and a brutal chess player. Said grinds away at Cannon's defense and whups him. Cannon takes the loss well. He bids the men goodbye -- in Arabic that sounds to me like ... real Arabic. How good are his linguistic skills, I ask two translators Cannon was speaking to. "Very good," says one. "There aren't many Americans here who speak at all," the other man tells me. Cannon is among the best in that small group. Managing Expectations Colonel Ron Johnson, the 24th MEU's Commanding Officer, gave me an interview on my last visit to Forward Base Kalsu before my return to the US. The MEU's Public Affairs chief, Capt. David Nevers, accompanied me and took notes. A partially unraveled roll of charts sat in the middle of the table in the middle of the Colonel's small office. I saw little cartoon faces with Arabic names beneath them connected to each other with lines, like a family tree. It's an enemy tree, I learned later, a schematic of suspected anti-US/anti-government groups the MEU believes are operating in the area. These are the Marines' targets. "The end state for Iraq," Colonel Johnson told me, "needs to be defined. It's not a simple answer." As in so many conflicts before, soldiers must implement a foreign policy that is not always clear. "The problem is that the military for the most part has been responsible for trying to help make that change occur, and so that's a pretty onerous responsibility on officers and men who are not trained for that." The exception are officers who have studied low-intensity conflicts, "small wars," at the various war colleges, Colonel Johnson added quickly. But these officers are thin on the ground; it's the sergeant and the "strategic corporal," young men from towns like Pleasantville, OH, and Pittsburgh, PA, who implement American policy in the field. "We take two steps back, but if we're taking three steps forward, “ says Johnson, “we're always moving in the right direction. We cannot put ourselves on an American timeline." He cautions that the pragmatics of change will take more time than politicians back home perhaps would like, and more time than they are prepared to admit publicly. Johnson drew me a simple L-shaped graph. He wrote "100" at the top of the vertical axis and zero at the bottom, creating a grading scale for quality-of-life improvements introduced by the Marines. The horizontal axis was time, the year to date. Then he drew a jagged line from zero that worked its way upward and terminated at "Today." His first-semester grade for US forces? Sixty percent. "That's failing," the Colonel pronounced. But success, he cautioned, is relative. "Are things better? Most definitely. Is there governance? Yes. Are there police? Yes. Is there education? Yes. Is there an economy? Yes. Is there commerce? Yes." There is liquid in the glass of progress, but I don't believe it is half full here in Northern Babil. I also question the durability of the glass itself once US forces hand over civil control in five months to a shaky government they cobbled together. I don't, however, doubt the commitment of the Marines of the 24th MEU to completing their mission as best they can.