Marines: Freedom should be focus on anniversary / Marines accept their role

So no stockpiles of chemical, biological or nuclear weapons have been unearthed ---- yet, he said. There were other reasons for going there, Ross said.

Many seem to be forgetting that coalition forces ousted and captured one of the most brutal dictators since Adolf Hitler, said Ariah Martindale, wife of Marine 2nd Lt. Eric Martindale, 25, who was deployed to Iraq two weeks ago.

"People don't compare it to the Holocaust or World War II," Ariah Martindale, 23, said. "But with all those deaths that Saddam caused, he should be accountable for what he's done."

While no one knows how many people were slaughtered by Saddam Hussein's regime, human rights groups estimate that 300,000 Iraqis were executed over three decades, according to wire service reports. And tens of thousands more were imprisoned and tortured.

Saddam was captured in December, five months after sons Qusai and Odai were killed in a battle with U.S. troops in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul. Dozens of other top officials of the ousted regime were captured or killed, too.

The United States produced a deck of playing cards featuring the faces of 52 Iraqi fugitives, and most of them have been accounted for.

"All those people on those face cards, by them being gone the world's a better place," Ross said.

It doesn't matter

And that's not all, Ross said.

The long-oppressed Iraqis have freedom now. In addition to that, he said, they are finding new schools, modern hospitals, clean water ---- even cell phones.

"After everything we've done, it doesn't matter if we find them (weapons) or we don't," said Cpl. Richard Polanco, a buff 21-year-old Marine from Weehawken, N.J., who wore a gold-colored chain around his neck and a sleeveless T-shirt on a chilly afternoon this week in downtown Oceanside.

The thoughts of Cpl. Matthew Hannon, 25, of Norwood, Pa., a member of the 1st Reconnaissance Battalion that fought a dozen battles in the war, were similar.

"Whatever the war was for, you look at the Iraqis now, and they're free," Hannon said. "Life is really good. And it is only going to get better for them as time goes on."

The tattooed, tobacco-chewing, head-shaven Hannon wishes Americans could have seen what he saw in Iraq.

Halfway through the conflict he was manning a checkpoint in a city roughly Oceanside's size. A sniper armed with an automatic rifle jumped out and shot at his buddy, seven feet away. His buddy took out the sniper.

Moments later, a mother and her 5-year-old boy strolled up. Despite the chaos, the boy wasn't frightened by "this big Marine standing beside the road," Hannon said, and in fact smiled when his buddy gave the child candy.

"It was Sweetarts, believe it or not," Hannon said.

Fast or slow?

It was also sweet to see, after the war, the gratitude of some Iraqi mothers and fathers, said Lance Cpl. Luis Gonzalez, 23, a reservist based at Miramar Marine Corps Air Station.

"They would say, 'Thank you because my son has a future now,'" Gonzalez said.

Gonzalez was in Iraq from May through September.

That life may not be getting better quickly enough for Iraqi children to satisfy critics in the United States is also frustrating for local Marines. That criticism, too, lacks perspective, in their opinion.

"People in America want fast results," Ariah Martindale said. "We're a fast country. We want results, and we want them now."

But people forget that war-torn countries are not rebuilt overnight, she said.

"They need to look at history," she added. "We still have troops in Germany. We still have troops in Korea."

According to Col. Tom Radabaugh, 45, a Miramar-based pilot who flies F-18s and has been deployed to Iraq five times in the past decade and a half, progress has been made at something like warp speed.

"I think it's amazing what Americans have accomplished in a year. It's just been one year," Radabaugh said.

That is not to say Marines do not find it frustrating that terrorists and guerrillas continue to shoot at American forces one year after the first shots were fired in Baghdad. One does wonder when it is all going to end, Polanco said.

"We did so much for them and they are looking at us as if we are the criminal, as if we did something wrong," he said.

Frustration and freedom

It also is frustrating to hear the criticism at home, Marines say.

In the past year, there have been big public protests. And big-name politicians have been critical of the United States for picking a fight without proof of chemical and biological weapons. And the criticism continues to flow.

Critics need not look hard for ammunition. Almost daily headlines and nightly news are filled with fresh reports of deadly car bombings and sniper attacks.

Indeed, the war is shaping up to be a central issue of the 2004 presidential election campaign.

Still, local Marines say the opposition is way different than the protest that surrounded Vietnam. This time it is aimed squarely at policy-makers, not the troops out on the front lines. And the Marines say they feel support from war supporters and opponents alike.

"I don't get overly excited if somebody is protesting," said Col. John Sweeney, 50, chief of staff for the Camp Pendleton-based 1st Force Service Support Group. "That's America, and that's what our Constitution permits. The beauty of our democracy is freedom of speech and open debate."

Sweeney was in Iraq and Kuwait from February 2003 to August. He helped direct the 725-mile supply line from the Kuwaiti border to Tikrit that supplied troops in the Iraqi interior with fuel, ammunition, water, food and medicine.

Fears and wishes

In a way, Sweeney wishes he had gone back with the 25,000 Marines and sailors ---- 14,000 of them from Camp Pendleton ---- who recently deployed to relieve the Army's 82nd Airborne Division in western Iraq. About 60 percent of those forces have already been to Iraq, said 2nd Lt. Robert Shuford, a Pendleton spokesman.

One of those who did deploy to Iraq recently is 36-year-old Gunnery Sgt. Michael Holcomb, an 18-year veteran of the Marines stationed 120 miles west of Baghdad.

The Holcombs are practically the ideal Marine family. He is a Marine. His wife, Tammy, 35, is a former Marine. And their oldest son has decided to go to boot camp upon graduation in 2005.

Still, his wife of less than a year ---- their anniversary is April 12 ---- quietly wishes he hadn't gone because of the particularly dangerous and volatile place he is in.

"I hid a lot of my feelings from him, being a newlywed," Tammy Holcomb said. "The kids took it very hard. They are very close to him."

Between them they have five children. The youngest, 10-year-old William, who lives with his mother in Texas, had a nightmare a few nights ago that his father was killed in battle, she said.

Tammy Holcomb copes with her own fear by keeping busy.

"I try to bury myself with work," she said. "I don't watch the news. I don't listen to the radio. I don't want my kids inundated with that. I think it would add too much stress. When my husband comes back, then I'll start watching TV again."

Contact staff writer Dave Downey at (760) 740-3529 or ddowney@nctimes.com.