Here�s what two Marines say

As opposition to the war mounts at home, Marines in Iraq say you�re not hearing how they�ve made a difference

What the soldiers say>

BROOK PARK, Ohio � Cpl. Stan Mayer has seen the worst of war. In the leaves of his photo album, there are casual memorials to the cost of the Iraq conflict � candid portraits of friends who never came home and graphic pictures of how insurgent bombs have shredded steel and bone.

Yet the Iraq of Mayer�s memory is not solely a place of death and loss. It is also a place of hope. It is the hope of the town of Hit, which he saw transform from an insurgent stronghold to a place where kids played on Marine trucks. It is the hope of villagers who whispered where roadside bombs were hidden. But most of all, it is the hope he saw in a young Iraqi girl who loved pens and Oreo cookies.

Like many soldiers and marines returning from Iraq, Mayer looks at the bleak portrayal of the war at home with perplexity, if not annoyance. It is a perception gap that has put the military and media at odds, as troops complain that the media care only about death tolls, while the media counter that their job is to look at the broader picture, not through the soda straw of troops� individual experiences.

�We know we made a positive difference,� says Cpl. Jeff Schuller of the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, who spent all but one week of his eight-month tour with Mayer. �I can�t say at what level, but I know that where we were, we made it better than it was when we got there.�

�What the national news media try to do is figure out: What�s the overall verdict?� says Brig. Gen. Volney Warner, deputy commandant of the Army Command and General Staff College. �Soldiers don�t do overall verdicts.�

Yet soldiers clearly feel that important elements are being left out of the media�s overall verdict.

They remember one Iraqi man who could not hide his joy at the marvel of an electric razor. And at the end of the 3/25�s tour, a member of the Iraqi Army said: �Marines are not friends; Marines are brothers,� says Lt. Richard Malmstrom, the battalion�s chaplain.

�It comes down to the familiar debate about whether reporters are ignoring the good news,� says Peter Hart, an analyst at Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, a usually left-leaning media watchdog in New York.

In Hit, where Marines stayed in force to keep the peace, the progress was obvious, say members of the 3/25. The residents started burning trash and fixing roads � a sign that the city was returning to a sense of normalcy. Several times, �people came up to us (and said): �There�s a bomb on the side of the road. Don�t go there,� � says Pfc. Andrew Howland.