Buh-bye to Mil-blogs?
02 May 2007 5:11 pm by Taylor Marsh
Needless to say this comes as no surprise, especially to me. Just try getting
Centcom’s attention if you’re a progressive Democratic blogger. Only the wingnuts
exist to them.
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal
e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer,
Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction
on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could
mean the end of military blogs, observers say.Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops
who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against
the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most
effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops
themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive
atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have
dropped offline as a result.The new rules
(.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every
blog update. … ..(snip)
Active-duty troops aren’t the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians
working for the military, Army contractors — even soldiers’ families — are
all subject to the directive as well. … ..
We’re not talking about classified information or even information that might be considered sensitive,
but instead a wider definition of what is considered unclassified information. It’s like, you know, like Mr. Bush’s expanded government secrecy campaign.
You can die for your country, but the 1st Amendment, even if it includes basic
bar conversation, is strictly forbidden. There’s no doubt that the Iraq war is going terribly, with the civil war and insurgent killings escalating even with the escalation in full swing. Censoring the military is nothing new, but somehow this feels like a fresh effort of overreach to me.
