Moderator: Andi from Andi’s World
Rachele from Army Wife Toddler Mom
Sarah from Trying to Grok
Becky from Military Families Voice of the Country
Carla from Some Solider’s Mom
This is a great panel, talking about military spouses and the families who are left behind. In Blackfive’s book Blog of War, the chapter on the families was the most moving part of the book. These families are asked to make incredible sacrifices and have to take on incredible burdens.
All of the panelists have commented on how blogging has been great outlet for them. It is a way for them to voice their support, frustrations, hopes and fears. Rachelle just mentioned something called Anticipatory Grief, that is something that spouses of combat deployed soldiers have to deal with. Very moving point.
A very small numbers of families are carrying an enormous burden. Check out all of these blogs for insight into these incredibly special Americans.
Prose from the Pros
After 642-892 a large number of professionals suggest to go for 70-271 or 642-901. People who go for 220-602 don’t fare bad either.
Panel #1
Moderator: Matthew Currier Burden of Blackfive
Bill Ardolino of INDC Journal
Bill Roggio of The Fourth Rail
Jim of Sgt. Hook
Sean of Doc In The Box
Jim: talking about his time in Afghanistan and a project he started called Operation Shoe Fly. One thing he noticed in Afghanistan was the kids had no shoes. He put the word out to the milblog community and filled a 40 foot trailer with shoes. He says that the operation is ongoing.
Matt asked Doc about what type of equipment the soldiers bring overseas. He says that on his first tour, guys were listening to CDs, the second and third tour, everyone had an iPod and laptop with them.
Doc is talking about the lack of internet access in Afghanistan. Believe it or not, the military guys have to pay for access. In Iraq, the situation is much different.
Bill Roggio is talking about the evolution in communications in theater.
Now the subject of operational security and the new regulations. Doc has read the new regulations. He thinks its not realistic to have every blog post approved by a commander. Op sec is critical, but there needs to be a balance.
Matt asked Bill A. about Anbar and the progress. Bill says the media is way behind the story. Progress has been going on for months, but they are just now reporting on it. Why? One reason is that they don’t have people on the ground. It’s expensive and dangerous.
Bill Roggio: he’s talking about how nothing happens quite a bit in Iraq. He mentions that when he embeds, he often does posts on the street patrols that he went on and nothing happened. The nly time the media does stories is when there is a gun battle or car bomb.
Matt mentions that an AP reporter told him that during his time in Iraq, he filed a story everyday. The only AP ran his stories was when they were filled with bad news. The good news stayed on the cutting room floor.
Bill A. is talking about how difficult it is to embed. The process, dealing with the PAO’s. He is talking about the difference between PAO’s from the different branches. The consensus among Matt, Bill R. and Bill A. is that the Marines are the best at helping embeds.
Matt is asking the question, what is the truth about troop morale. Bill A. is talking about Fallujah, and the morale of the troops. He says the MSM finds plenty of soldiers who have complaints. He says that is not indicative of the overall morale. His experience in Fallujah, everyone is very dedicated to the mission. He says it is underplayed in the MSM how devoted these guys are to the cause. Bill A. concurs, that are troops understand the mission, even if they disagreed with the decision to go into Iraq in the first place.
Jim says that morale ebbs and flows in combat. He says it is focus of the leadership. Morale is the cornerstone to helping us accomplish the mission. He says look at the retention, the Army rates are through the roof. That is the best way to measure troop morale, retention rates.
The conference started with a very special surprise guest, none other than the President of the United States. George W. Bush welcomed everyone to the conference via video. Gateway Pundit has posted it. He thanked the milbloggers for what they do, for supporting the troops and their mission and for getting the word out, for communicating with the families of the soldiers. A very nice surprise indeed.
Up next, also via video conference, Rear Admiral Mark I. Fox, live from Iraq. He also made some opening remarks, thanked the milbloggers for what they are doing. He then opened up for the floor for a Q&A session.
Rear Admiral Mark I. Fox is now talking about Gen. Petreaus and his new plan for Iraq. Four of the five brigades are now in country. The final brigade will be there next month. He talked about how brutal this enemy is. He used the word evil to describe their tactics, the indiscriminate slaughter of women, children, the elderly. He talked about the progress they have seen recently, and how they will be able to stabilize the country, if given the time. That is the big question, because the domestic insurgents here at home are already declaring our new strategy a failure. Basically, this summer will be critical to the future of Iraq, and the United States.
It was great while it lasted, wasn’t it? The US military has effectively ordered an end to milblogging.
Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
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.
No big deal, we can rely on the MSM to give us our news from now on…sigh.
As great as our military is, we suck at Information Warfare in the Information Age. We’ve told you about Michael Yon’s repeated problems with the military, and now this.
Matt Burden, aka Blackfive, chronicled the golden age of milblogging in his awesome book Blog of War: Frontline Dispatches from Iraq and Afghanistan. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Especially now.
Matt has a great post on the end of milblogging,
Operational Security is of paramount importance. But we are losing the Information War on all fronts. Fanatic-like adherence to OPSEC will do us little good if we lose the few honest voices that tell the truth about The Long War.
I will be attending the 2007 Milblogging Conference this weekend in Washington DC. Good thing, because it is probably the last. I will have plenty of interviews with all of your favorite milbloggers, like Blackfive, Bill Roggio, John Noonan, Uncle Jimbo, Michael Fumento and many others. I also have a few surprises up my sleeve. Stay tuned.
UPDATE: In the comments, Michael Fumento reminded me of something he wrote earlier this week. At the end of a lengthy post about his recent embed in Afghanistan, Michael unloaded on the Army Public Affairs Office,
The more I get to know Army PAOs, whether in Iraq or Afghanistan, the less respect I have for them. They always seem to have something better to do than their jobs. I’m told the Marines take this business much more seriously and in fact the best PAO I had was Marine Maj. Megan McClung. But she’s dead.
Michael wrote a series of moving articles about Maj. McClung here, here and here. He continued,
I strongly suspect (actually I know), that if I worked for the MSM — the folks the soldiers are always complaining about to me, including on this trip — I wouldn’t receive such shabby treatment. But you have to have priorities. If you’re dealing with a reporter whose organization makes a point of portraying the troops as a bunch of thugs and the Iraq war as hopeless, you give him first class treatment. Thank goodness the government of Iraq banned Al Jazeera, else the Army’s PAO staff would be absorbed in kissing their feet.
If you’re dealing with somebody paying out of his own pocket because of his conviction that the American people deserve the truth and aren’t getting it and that the soldiers deserve an even break and aren’t getting it — you dump on him. You give him crummy assignments, such as when Lt. Col. Garver and his Combined Press Information Center tried to foist 12 days of ho-hum Tikrit on me, and then when he needs to go home you make plot his own way out of a country he’s never been in that’s on the wrong side of the planet.
It helps explain why there are so few citizen embeds still going to the two wars. We thought the bad guys comprised insurgents and terrorists and those in the MSM who provide them aid and comfort. We did not think it would be our own military public affairs.
Here is another PAO classic from Michael Yon,
Mr. Yon;
I do not recognize your website as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering MNF-I operations.
LTC Barry Johnson
Director, CPIC
www.mnf-iraq.com
Say what you will about Rumsfeld, but he was spot on when it came to the media,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared today that the war on terror is not only being fought on the battlefield, “but in the newsrooms — in places like New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere.” At a speech before the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Rumsfeld outlined a strategy for the U.S. to become more aggressive in conducting “information warfare” in the modern era of satellite TV and the Internet.
Like many of Rumsfeld plans, that never materialized.
To summarize: We have a completely inarticulate commander-in-chief and we just silenced our greatest asset in the information war, the troops themselves. Yon, Fumento and other citizen journalists who are willing pay their way and work independently are treated like second class citizens.
When I look at presidential contenders for 2008, one of the biggest factors for me is the ability to articulate a clear rationale for our actions in this Long War.
Chuck Colson has this to say about HR 1592 the Democrat sponsored proposed bill before the House entitled “the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act.”
Clearly, the intent of this law is not to prevent crime, but to shut down freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of thought. Its passage would strike at the very heart of our democracy.
He is 100% correct. Most troubling is that the law does not define “sexual orientation,” leaving wide-open the definition of the term.
A list of some “sexual orientations” include:
Coprophilia – sexual arousal associated with feces
Exhibitionism – the act of exposing one’s genitals to an unwilling observer to obtain sexual gratification
Frotteurism – approaching an unknown woman from the rear and pressing or rubbing the penis against her buttocks
Incest – sex with a sibling or parent
Kleptophilia – obtaining sexual excitement from stealing
Necrophilia – sexual arousal and/or activity with a corpse
Pederasty – Sex between an adult and a child, usually an adult male and a male child.
Pedophilia – Sexual contact between an adult and a child
Bisexual Pedophilia – term used for an adult who derives sexual gratification from sexual contact with a child without regard to the sex of the child
Sexual masochism – obtaining sexual gratification by being subjected to pain or humiliation
Sexual sadism – the intentional infliction of pain or humiliation on another person in order to achieve sexual excitement
Toucherism – characterized by a strong desire to touch the breast or genitals of an unknown woman without her consent; often occurs in conjunction with other paraphilia
Transvestite – a person who is sexually stimulated or gratified by wearing the clothes of the other gender
Urophilia – sexual arousal associated with urine
Zoophilia/Bestiality – engaging in sexual activity with animals
entire list here
So, this proposal which has already been endorsed by a majority of Democrats (137 sponsors to date) would essentially criminalize thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. It would also violate religious liberty and freedom of speech.
If this bill were to become federal law, it would be a federal crime for a Christian Pastor to describe homosexuality as an abomination by quoting the Bible (Lev 18:22).
Under this bill it would be illegal for a Chrurch, Mosque, or Synangogue to discriminate based on the applicant’s sexual “orientation.” If, for example, the applicant for a pastoral position at a church were a cross-dresser or Pedophile, it would be a federal crime to “discriminate” against that person based on their “sexual orientation.”
The proposal would make it a federally indictable crime to reject a job applicant seeking employment in a restaurant if he had AIDs or hepatitis.
The proposal would make it a federal crime to deny a self-described necropheliac from becoming a scout master.
This legislation is the most insane piece of legislation I have ever read. It is nothing more than a way to crimminalize free speech and religious beliefs especially Christian religious beliefs.
All people concerned about the preservation of the 1st Amendment should emphatically reject this Orwellian Democrat sponsored legislation.
Michael Yon is back with part two of his photo essay, Desires of the Human Heart. Check it out here.
Michael also sends word that he will be part of a reality TV series that will film his experiences in Iraq. Very cool. Finally a reality TV show that I will watch!
Verite Series Features Acclaimed War Correspondent in Iraq
Michael Yon, the acclaimed independent photo journalist and war correspondent currently embedded in Iraq covering the “surge†has signed an exclusive deal with Peace River Company LLC and Extant Media to produce a verite television series that will film his war zone dispatches from Iraq.
This television vehicle, tentatively titled “Michael Yon: Dispatches/Iraqâ€, will bring a new dimension to Yon’s sometimes brutal blog accounts and vivid images as he covers the life and death struggle of the soldiers and citizens of this war torn country. Yon is one of the only journalists to brave the streets of Baghdad beyond the protected Green Zone and bring unfiltered war accounts to the American public.
“This is arguably the most dangerous journalistic assignment in the worldâ€, said writer/director Kevin Knoblock of Peace River Company. Over 100 journalists or media workers have died since the beginning of the war. Michael isn’t doing the usual 3 or 5 day or 2 week or 4 week embed that many in the main stream media opt for. I give those brave men and women all the credit in the world. But Michael is there for all of 2007, despite what happens with the surge or with Congress. Given the extreme dangers, his dedication is hard to ignore.â€
Yon, a former Green Beret, has returned to Iraq and has been embedded since the beginning of 2007, posting dispatches and photos to his popular website www.michaelyon-online.com. Yon first went to Iraq to tell the stories of the soldiers so that we could better understand the lives of fellow Americans fighting there. He is currently embedded with the British in Basra, but will be returning to Baghdad shortly to embed with US forces implementing the “surge.”
Yon was first embedded with US Army and coalition forces in 2005 at his own expense. Through personal funds and later through reader donations, Yon bought a digital camera, laptop, thousands of dollars in body armor and an airplane ticket. Once in country, primarily with the Deuce Four Battalion, he began to record a history not often reported by the main stream media.
Yon’s widely read accounts of the war have frequently drawn praise from US officials. One was even read on the floor of the U.S. Senate. By mid 2006 less than 100 other Web Blogs out of some 26 million on the Internet have received more links from other Web sites.
Yon’s Iraq dispatches were excerpted by American newspapers and magazines including the Northwest Guardian, the Boston Herald, The Seattle Times, The Star Tribune, and The Weekly Standard. Though a self-taught writer Yon gained praise from well-known and respected journalists, including war correspondent Joe Galloway and Michael Barone, a senior writer for US News and World Report. Yon has been called “the single best combat reporter on the ground in Iraq today†and been compared to WWII combat writers Ernest Hemingway and Ernie Pyle for his ability to bring readers into the battle and for humanizing both the troops and local citizens.
Alex Perry, Time Magazine’s Asia Bureau Chief, said of Yon: “In years ahead, foreign correspondents may come to understand that the revolution that changed everything they do — how they work, how they write, who employs them — began with Michael Yon. Yon is the first true war blogger.”
Because Yon is not associated with any network his stay in Iraq continues to be strictly self funded—allowing him to report what he sees without filters. The producers want viewers to walk in the footsteps of a 21st century war correspondent – without the time limitations of the nightly news – and shot in High Definition video with Yon’s distinctive narrative providing the dramatic
context.Viewers will embed with Yon in Kuwait, experience the gut wrenching ‘spiral’ into Baghdad International Airport to avoid enemy fire and negotiate the treacherous stretch of road into the Baghdad Green Zone. From there viewers will be taken to the front lines, into high level conflict areas with top US and Iraqi commanders, into Iraqi security force training centers, city jails, on
patrols and into the rec rooms for downtime with the troops.Michael Yon: Dispatches/Iraq shows the very serious dangers faced by the modern war correspondent and his crew. Thirteen episodes are planned.
Our good friend Janet Levy of Jihad Watch had this outstanding article in the American Thinker entitled, “The Fight to Bar Arms.” It is a must read for anybody who believes that the Va Tech shooting is evidence that we need “stricter gun control laws.” In fact, this tragic incident demonstrates just the opposite. The last thing we need are more restrictions on law abiding gun owners. There are over 20,000 laws on the books already. And we all know that crimminals don’t obey laws in the first place. None of the calls for “longer waiting periods,” “assault weapons bans,” “increased registartion” etc…have ever led to less gun related crime as I document thoroughly in my book “Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies.”
With the notoriety of its no-gun policy as a backdrop, the Virginia Tech campus thus ensured that students and faculty were practically sitting ducks, stripped of their ability to defend themselves during Monday’s tragic sniper shooting. Who can say if the methodical shooter, Seung-Hui Cho, a senior who was a Virginia Tech student during the 2005 student-disciplining incident, was aware of the school’s reputation and took it into account? What can be said, however, is that this most recent disaster, featured prominently on the national stage, underscores for many how necessary is our constitutional right to bear arms.
Read the entire article here.