THE Marines at this chopper base near the Iraqi border are seething with rage and talking revenge over the treatment of American POWs - paraded on TV and some possibly executed.
"OK, they want to play that way. We can play that way," vowed one enraged pilot.
Marine after Marine had the same message - many of them warning that there would be "no second chances for those Iraqis now."
Virtually every conversation here touched on the POW's treatment and possible executions yesterday. It was discussed on chow lines, in the bomb shelters, outside the latrines.
Robert "Doc" Davenport, a Marine medic trained to both save people and kill them, was among those struggling to digest the appalling news.
"It makes it harder to do my job," he said, explaining he'll now think twice about dressing the wounds of injured Iraqis.
"If we run across one of them and he needs my help, it will be harder for me to do it," he added.
Many Marines on this desert base - affectionately known as "Snakepit" - said they believe they were sent to Iraq not to hurt people, but to free them from Saddam Hussein's ruthless grip.
"We want to help these people and look what they're doing to us," said more than one shocked Marine.
"What we should do is go in there and kill every last soul," growled Sgt. Mike Brady.
"If they realize that we are going to kill them like that, they'll be like 'OK, OK, we surrender,' " said the 28-year-old Texas native.
Brady, who mans the twin 50-caliber machineguns aboard a Sea Stallion chopper, said he'll be much more wary now when he's flying over Iraqi positions.
He'll no longer give enemy soldiers the benefit of the doubt when they start waving white flags.
"I'm going to be a lot quicker to pull that trigger if I think they're up to something," he said.
During an air raid yesterday - when everyone rushed into the bomb shelters with their gas masks and chemical and biological gear - one Marine's muffled swearing was heard above the din.
Repeating the sneering nickname used for Saddam Hussein, he kept saying, " 'So damn' insane, 'so damn' insane. I'm going to come up there myself and kill you."
Of course, not everyone on the base is calling for blood - yet.
Cpl. Joseph Michinki said he's not convinced the executions actually took place.
"They can fake all kinds of things with video," noted Michinki, 21, of Georgia.
"But if that really was Americans being killed, I'd be pretty pissed," he added. NYPost
ROBERT Evans was ecstatic when his pal Roman Polanski won the Best Director Oscar, but was frustrated he couldn't reach Polanski via cell phone at his home in Paris.
"I've been calling all his numbers, and they're all busy," lamented Evans at the Vanity Fair party at Morton's in L.A. Sunday night.
In fact, Polanski and his sexy wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, watched his surprise win from the privacy of a $2,450-a-night suite at the Plaza Athenee in Paris, a hotel rep told Post travel editor Pucci Meyer. Guests who spotted Polanski arriving joined management in sending up bottles of champagne. PageSix
POMPOUS peacenik Barbra Streisand says she supports our troops, but still thinks President Bush is a bust. "I pray for America's military servicemen and women and their families," Streisand wrote in a missive on her Web site yesterday. "I pray that this war is over quickly, that our troops come home safely and that there are few civilian casualties." However, "I find it tragic that the Bush administration's attempts at diplomacy failed so miserably and have led us to the point of starting a war that might have been avoided." Page Six
BRITISH MP Boris Johnson has accused the New York Times of turning an op-ed column he wrote into a smarmy piece of politically correct garbage. [No way! This can't possibly be!] Johnson was initially "thrilled" to be asked to write the piece - which ran in the Times on March 16 - on Tony Blair, George Bush and Iraq. But he was dismayed when the editor raised issues of "political correctness." After a "bizarre, hourlong negotiation . . . I started to get a floaty, out-of-body sensation," Johnson writes in the London Spectator, when the editor informed him he couldn't say anything "deprecatory" about a black African country. "How craven and mealy mouthed can you get?" Johnson fumes. But he really flipped when told he couldn't use the expression "Gee, thanks" - because, the editor explained, "Gee is an abbreviation for Jesus, [and] for a century this has been a Jewish-owned newspaper and we have to be very careful about anything that might offend Christian sensibilities." Declares Johnson: "This is utterly insane." A Times rep did not respond to several calls and e-mails seeking comment. PageSix
ADD Lizzie Grubman to the list of Oscar boycotters. Grubman says she was supposed to go to the Academy Awards with her father, Allen Grubman, a prominent lawyer who reps many celebs, but decided against it. "We canceled because there's a war on," Grubman tells PAGE SIX. "The Oscars should have been canceled. There are prisoners of war and American soldiers are dying - to go out and party is disrepectful and not appropriate." Grubman says she didn't even bother to watch the show on TV. PageSix