“You have no idea how hard it is to put on a half-hour TV show three times a week, especially when you have one computer and the power is on about 50 percent of the time,” he said.

“We crashed every PC in town,” he said. Ultimately, Moulton convinced his commander to let him travel to Kuwait in order to acquire Macintosh computers for video editing.

“Being in Iraq is a miserable experience as far as the day-to-day living conditions of American servicemen and women,” Moulton said, “It’s hot as hell.”

Moulton spent the nights sleeping on the dirt floor of an old pistol factory.

“Americans would be surprised by what the Iraqi standard is for a quiet night,” he said. “They’d be up all night because people are shooting guns.

“You have a wedding party and people shoot off AK-47s in celebration,” Moulton said. “So people just have a different standard for danger.”

But Moutlon also said his show gave him the chance to tour Iraq’s archaeological treasures.

“Iraq is in many ways a beautiful country,” he said.

Moulton’s television show lapsed last year when he returned to Camp Pendleton in California. The Polish troops who took over in Hillah “didn’t understand how important it was to have a media campaign,” he said.

As Americans’ faith in the Iraqi effort sags, Moulton remains optimistic. “I even believe the larger mission has the potential, or at least a chance now, of succeeding,” he said. “Its success would mean an awful lot for peace in the Middle East...and the rest of the world.”

But, Moulton said, “the politics don’t matter at all. Quite frankly, this could be 1969 and Vietnam—in the midst of what is arguably the worst foreign policy mistake this nation has ever made—and I would still want to go back.”

“It’s about your friends,” he said. “I have a platoon of 35 young men...‘the grunts,’ on the front lines wherever the Marines go.”

“My job is to take responsibility for these men. It’s not like being responsible for a fund or an Internet company,” he said.

‘A BURGER, A BEER AND A GIRLFRIEND’

Three years ago, upon being chosen to deliver the English oration at the 2001 Commencement, Moulton told The Crimson, “Just because our generation doesn’t have an obvious cause or challenge, like a war, doesn’t mean we should not aspire to do great things in the world.”