Aw, Hell

One of the reasons for the continued (solid) grass-roots support of the current war, and of our military in general, is because the true message of what is happening is getting out to "the masses" through channels other than the Main Stream Media.

This reflects several things, which include the following:

1. The average American actually supports our efforts and the work our troops are doing.

2. The main stream media has an agenda other than supporting said efforts.

3. The official military reporting channels are failing misserably, because they can't keep up with refuting all the MSM non-sense.

In the end, mil-blogging is making the official military propaganda process look foolish. Making the MSM look like the hypocrites that they are. And fueling the nations ardor for the war against Islamo-fascism.

Three strikes against mil-blogging because you all are defeating the "progressive agenda" which is to:

1. Define the war as lost.
2. Defend the media as our defendor of our new moral progressive compass.
3. Tollerate the Eastern cultural and religion as equal and/or the same as our Western culture.

Can anyone confirm that the Air Force, Navy, and Marines are not (yet ?) surrendering to al-Qaeda with this disgraceful stupdity?

I hope someone gets up a petition to the Commander in Chief to rescind these regulations?

I think things just got to the point where too many milbloggers were getting too specific WRT cities, towns, roads, highways, and tactics used in the COIN war.

Just in the past few weeks I've read popular milblogs discuss the code names for highways and military routes. We use code names for roads, highways, cities, town, air corridors, etc for not only brevity on the radio but for OPSEC to keep the enemy on its toes.

Likewise, milbloggers discuss counter-IED equipment, tactics, and locations of these killers. A milblogger who wrote that an IED was found in BLANK city, near the BLANK river, under BLANK bridge tells AQ that we've disabled it and we lose the opportunity to keep that information and monitor the area for them to return and attempt to employ it.

I think better Army policy would have been to ban the use of names, places, and cities in blogs...keep these things very generic in nature...and of course avoid the use of code words.

Just my 0.02 cents.

"Aw hell" is right, and it's the mildest thing we could say. Shortsighted, stupid, self-defeating. Unbelievable.

Do any of these bureaucrats understand information warfare?

Probably too busy filling out ID-10T forms.

You might want to actually read the new Army Regulation 530-1 of 19 Apr07 which states:

2-1

g. Consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or
posting information in a public forum.
(1) This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site
postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or
other forms of dissemination or documentation.

This apparently covers ANY communication. I can't speak for you Army guys, but I sure didn't have time to review any and every thing that wa written. And neither did my SNCOs or my NCOs.

What in the world are they drinking in the Pentagon these days?

Marine6 Sends

This requirement may be getting rescinded. I believe the milbloggers got nailed not so much for Opsec, but because of critical (and often funny) commentary on Congressional Democrat pronouncements. For example, Senator Kerry's gaffe on the intelligence of military members, and Senator Reid's declaration of the war being lost sparked lots of criticism.

Of course, the Army does really really suck at information operations.

My "little" niece is shipping out to Iraq today, a mere 2 weeks after initial training. I would like to be able to send her video greetings, but this has become much harder with the new policy. What's more, I find it very comforting (in a strange way) to see reports from the field, fairly unrefined by the propaganda machine, to better understand what she will be going through.

I understand the need for secrecy, but I would think the soldiers would not reveal anything that would compromise their own safety. What's more, I fear this policy shuts the most effective voices for positive morale, and at the same time stops a pipeline for relatives to communicate with each other. Meanwhile, the insurgents continue posting videos of their own. This can't be useful.

See my blog post at http://angrylabrat.blogspot.com/2007/05/no-videos-for-troops.html.

Free video email may help.

This may be helpful to those of you who are trying to send and receive video email. www.freegabmail.com allows users to send video email for free. The site doesn't require registration or downloading software. You just use your webcam to send messages. Anyone can receive the message in email.

I hope this helps.

Jack