MORE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ SPEAK OUT

Tom Lasseter of Knight-Ridder continues his excellent reporting. Here are some excerpts:

MUQDADIYAH, Iraq - Sgt. Antonio Molina sat on a rooftop in the pitch of night, scanning the road before him with a high-powered sniper scope, hoping an insurgent would scramble out of a car to lay a bomb and give him a reason to squeeze the trigger. He and three other 3rd Infantry Division snipers were dropped off this week at a house on the outskirts of Muqdadiyah, in an Iraqi province that military officials frequently claim is largely pacified.

"Some people don't get the gravity of the situation here; people in the Green Zone are always trying to paint a rosy picture," said Molina, a 27-year-old sniper from Clearwater, Fla. He was referring to the fortified compound in Baghdad where U.S. officials work. "These politicians are all about sending people to war but they don't know what it's all about, being over here and getting shot at, walking through s--- swamps, having bombs go off, hearing bullets fly by. They have no idea what that's like." "As soon as we leave this place they're all going to kill each other," Molina said at a meeting in his barracks recently. His sniper team commander, Staff Sgt. Donnie Hendricks, agreed: "It's going to be a f------ civil war."

Sitting in the darkness, near the edge of a palm grove, Molina looked at the street in front of him. "The reason why they're fighting us is not Osama bin Laden. They're fighting us because we're here. ... They don't want us here. They just want us to leave. I guess that would be a victory for them," he said. "As far as I can see there's not going to be any victory for us." Sabin, sitting next to him, nodded.

"In past situations you've had a good guy and a bad guy and the troops were impassioned, but now troops just want to go home," Sabin said. "I don't feel like there's a cause. I don't personally think there's a reason for this."