Notice came across the Marine Corps' Semper.net on Wednesday that terror suspect Osama bin Laden had been captured.

Cheers bounced from tent to tent as word of bin Laden's capture made its way around. Washington quickly dismissed the report.

But what about the rumors that a certain actress was killed or that another female pop star was disfigured in a car accident -- two other juicy but false tidbits that made the rounds this week.

The infantry, tank, reconnaissance, and artillery units here are most interested, of course, in news about the looming war in Iraq. The vast majority of the Marines are between the ages of 18 and 22, and patience is not their strongest virtue.

Most of the soldiers dislike living in the sand and being cut off from family and friends for weeks and months at a time, so they desperately want to do the job they came for or go back home.

Every one of the men and women here also knows that the conditions for fighting a war in Iraq get worse by the day -- temperatures get warmer by an average of one degree a day during March, and will soon be unbearably hot, especially if they have to wear bio-chem hazard suits.

And then there are the creepy-crawlies like scorpions and Sand Cobras to fight or avoid.

Lieutenant Colonel Paul O'Leary Jr, a Needham native and commanding officer of the Second Battalion, 11th Marine Regiment, said the decision about if and when his unit moves is out of his military hands. ''This is a political decision at this point and a political process,'' O'Leary said. ''I'm comfortable with that.''

So the troops wait. Here and at bases across northern Kuwait, more than 150,000 American troops try to fight off boredom and, increasingly, to stay out of the midday sun. At least once a day, alarms sound at Living Support Area 5 that send everyone rushing to put on gas masks.

Then they take off their masks and wait some more.

This story ran on page A21 of the Boston Globe on 3/16/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.