Joseph Mallia / Newsday & Doug Thompson / Capitol Hill Blue – 2006-01-03 23:42:08
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-liblog02,0,2935520.story
US Military ‘Shuts Down’ Soldiers’ Blogs; Orders GI’s to Promote War
Joseph Mallia / Newsday
WASHINGTON (January 2, 2006) — Letters home filled with tales of death and danger, bravery and boredom are a wartime certainty.
And now, as hundreds of soldiers overseas have started keeping Internet journals about the heat, the homesickness, the bloodshed, word speeds from the battlefront faster than ever.
More and more, though, U.S. military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan are clamping down on these military Web logs, known as milblogs.
After all, digital photos of blown-up tanks and gritty comments on urban warfare don’t just interest mom and dad.
The enemy, too, has a laptop and satellite link.
Nowadays, milbloggers “get shut down almost as fast as they’re set up,” said New York Army National Guard Spc. Jason Christopher Hartley, 31, of upstate New Paltz, who believes something is lost as the grunt’s-eye take on Tikrit or Kabul is silenced or sanitized.
Hartley last January was among the first active-duty combat troops demoted and fined for security violations on his blog, justanothersoldier.com.
Throughout last year, the Army, Marines, Air Force and Navy tightened control on bloggers by requiring them to register through the chain of command and by creating special security squads to monitor milblogs.
“The ones that stay up are completely patriotic and innocuous, and they’re fine if you want to read the flag-waving and how everything’s peachy keen in Iraq,” said Hartley, who is back in New Paltz after two years stationed in Iraq.
The new emphasis on security, however, is welcome to some.
“When you put your blog out there, you cannot forget that not only the good guys, but the bad guys are accessing it, especially for TTPs,” said Marine Capt. Don Caetano, of Mineola, referring to techniques, tactics and procedures. Now a recruiter in Garden City, Caetano was stationed in Fallujah, where he ran the embedded journalist program.
“The limitations on blogging basically mean, ‘Don’t make it easy for them. Don’t readily give up information,’ ” that would endanger US troops, Caetano said.
Revealing a minor aspect of strategy or tactics may seem insignificant, Caetano said, but, “If the bad guys take a piece from me, and a piece from you, and a piece from another guy, pretty soon they can gather some pretty good intel.”
The military, at first unaware of the milblogging trend, last year began targeting bloggers with warnings, punctuated by high-profile disciplinary action.
The Army chief of staff, Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, in August sent a videotaped admonition to overseas troops warning them of the dangers of carelessness on blogs.
And, echoing the World War II censorship slogan, “Loose lips sink ships,” the Pentagon in November sent out an advisory titled “Loose blogs may blow up BCTs.” A BCT is a brigade combat team.
Hartley was fined $1,000 and demoted from sergeant. Others also have been disciplined, including Pfc. Leonard Clark, an Arizona national guardsman serving in Iraq who was demoted from specialist and fined $1,640 in August for putting classified information on his blog.
‘That’s sorta the point’
Among security breaches in postings on soldiers’ Web sites, the Army pointed to photos of an Abrams tank pierced by a rocket-propelled grenade, which could show Iraqi insurgents where to aim.
In Hartley’s case, the Army said he should not have described his unit’s flight route into Iraq because that could help the enemy shoot down U.S. aircraft. And, the Army said, Hartley should not have disclosed that the last three bullets he loaded into his weapon’s magazine were always tracers, because that could tip an enemy to time an attack just as an American soldier is reloading.
Despite those charges, Hartley asserts he did not put any American troops at risk. He believes the Army’s real concern was his satiric tone.
“Photos of the week of cute Iraqi kids who I want to shoot,” he captioned one set of snapshots on his blog in 2004.
“Something I cannot reiterate often enough is how monumentally misbehaved Iraqi street kids are,” Hartley’s blog continued. “But some of them are just so darn cute, you can’t help but want to squeeze their little faces – until they suffocate.”
The Army took him literally, even though Hartley said he was aiming his satire at those who believe Iraqi civilians’ lives have little value.
Some of Hartley’s readers got the point. Others did not.
One of Hartley’s Web entries on April 24, 2004, carried a photograph of an Iraqi man’s partially burned corpse clothed in a bloodied white tunic. Hartley’s photo caption was a take on the “I [heart] New York City” slogan. His version: “I [heart] Dead Civilians.”
In response, a visitor wrote: “Is this a joke or what? This whole blogg gives a bad taste in the mouth.”
Hartley replied, “It leaves a bad taste in your mouth? That’s sorta the point.”
Another blog reader, with the moniker Alberto, defended the shock-blog: “The point of being so graphic it’s to see what a war really is. Good blog, keep it up!”
In general, observers say, soldiers’ online musings are less and less compelling.
There’s less of the informal, often coarse language – one soldier speaking to another – that gave a feeling of authenticity and attracted thousands of readers both in and out of the military, said Jon Peede, director of Operation Homecoming, a National Endowment for the Arts program that gives writing instruction to US troops and is creating a collection of their blogs, letters and essays.
Yet one drawback to vivid, uncensored descriptions of combat on blogs was that the family of a wounded or killed soldier might get the news impersonally, or worry unnecessarily, Peede said.
“A blogger might say, ‘We were in a firefight in a particular city, and a fellow Marine was wounded,’ ” Peede said, “and then 50 families might read that and think it’s their son or brother.”
Content Concerns
Besides, wayward milblogs give the world a skewed view of US troops, said Capt. Dan Rice, of Manhattan, who served in Tikrit for 18 months with the US Army National Guard’s 42nd Infantry Division. A West Point graduate, Rice served as a finance officer and is now back working as a vice president at the US Trust Co. of New York.
Most bloggers are atypical soldiers, said Rice, who wrote a pro-military blog favored by his superior officers. “It will mostly be the risk-takers, the mavericks, and the one percent that’s bitter, who will blog.”
Readers also have taken up the debate.
“my only concern is the posting of troopers pics and info … the jihadist moniter [sic] these blogs too,” a visitor to adayiniraq.com wrote.
“these troops may have been compromised by these blogs,” the visitor wrote. “i for one would rather have no blogs about our troopers if it needlessly endanger’s 1 of thier [sic] lives.”
Marine Cpl. Al Maldonado, 28, of West Hempstead, who saw combat in Iraq, said milblogs help maintain a connection between the troops and their friends, family and community back home. During weeks of supplying tons of ammunition to Marines in Fallujah in November, his family was cheered to find a humorous photo of him on a blog, Maldonado said.
Blogs also allow soldiers to simply describe their combat experiences, without feeling they are bragging, Maldonado said.
“Sometimes they want to tell everyone what they went through because they’re afraid that when they go back, they won’t be appreciated for what they’ve done,” he said.
Maldonado, an ammo chief, criticized Hartley for blogging about the reloading technique. “To describe your method for loading tracers in a blog, that’s pretty stupid. Now I know when three tracers go by me that’s when he’s reloading,” he said.
A waste of time?
Seymour Hersh, the reporter who broke stories on the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War and torture at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad, said military commanders can’t control the flow of information by shutting down soldiers’ blogs.
“There’s a tremendous communication underground. [Soldiers] talk, they send e-mails, photos,” Hersh said from his Washington, DC, office. “The Army is wasting its time.”
Milblogs Remain Popular.
mudvillegazette.com claimed more than 700,000 page views in 2005, with blackfive.net not far behind. And michaelyon.blogspot is ranked in the top 100 (No. 81) of the 8 million blogs tracked by Technorati.com.
But with stricter controls now in place, the milblogosphere’s freewheeling days likely are limited.
Some critics of the censorship say it could be harder for American soldiers to publicly raise questions about the US invasion of Iraq, the success or failure of the war effort, and the “stop-loss” policy that forces soldiers to remain after enlistment contracts expire.
But a complete milblog blackout may never succeed.
“Is it over? No way, as long as there are soldiers and the Internet. People will always be starting blogs and get shut down, and then someone else starts one,” Hartley said. “In my generation, or younger, everyone’s all about spilling their guts on the Internet.”
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7918.shtml
Pentagon Propaganda Program Orders Soldiers to
Promote Iraq War while Home on Leave
Doug Thompson / Capitol Hill Blue
WASHINGTON (December 29, 2005) — Good soldiers follow orders and hundreds of American military men and women returned to the United States on holiday leave this month with orders to sell the Iraq war to a skeptical public.
The program, coordinated through a Pentagon operation dubbed “Operation Homefront,” ordered military personnel to give interviews to their hometown newspapers, television stations and other media outlets and praise the American war effort in Iraq.
Initial reports back to the Pentagon deem the operation a success with dozens of front page stories in daily and weekly newspapers around the country along with upbeat reports on local television stations.
“We’ve learned as a military how to do this better,” Captain David Diaz, a military reservist, told his hometown paper, The Roanoke (VA) Times. “My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin.”
When pressed by the paper on whether or not his commanding officers told him to talk to the press, Diaz admitted he was “encouraged” to do so. So reporter Duncan Adams asked:
“Did Diaz return to the US on emergency leave with an agenda — to offer a positive spin that could help counter growing concerns among Americans about the US exit strategy? How do we know that’s not his strategy, especially after he discloses that superior officers encouraged him to talk about his experiences in Iraq?”
Replied Diaz:
“You don’t. I can tell you that the direction we’ve gotten from on high is that there is a concern about public opinion out there and they want to set the record straight.”
Diaz, an intelligence officer, knows how to avoid a direct answer. Other military personnel, however, tell Capitol Hill Blue privately that the pressure to “sell the war” back home is enormous.
“I’ve been promised an early release if I do a good job promoting the war,” says one reservist who asked not to be identified.
In interviews with a number of reservists home for the holidays, a pattern emerges on the Pentagon’s propaganda effort. Soldiers are encouraged to contact their local news media outlets to offer interviews about the war. A detailed set of talking points encourages them to:
• Admit initial doubts about the war but claim conversion to a belief in the American mission;
• Praise military leadership in Iraq and throw in a few words of support for the Bush administration;
• Claim the mission to turn security of the country over to the Iraqis is working;
• Reiterate that America must not abandon its mission and must stay until the “job is finished.”
• Talk about how “things are better” now in Iraq.
“My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin,” Diaz told The Roanoke Times.
“It’s way better now (in Iraq). People are friendlier. They seem more relaxed, and they say, ‘Thank you, mister,'” Sgt. Christopher Desierto told his hometown paper, The Maui News.
But soldiers who are home and don’t have to return to Iraq tell a different story.
“I’ve just been focused on trying to get the rest of these guys home,” says Sgt. Major Floyd Dubose of Jackson, MS, who returned home after 11 months in Iraq with the Mississippi Army National Guard’s 155th Combat Brigade.
And the Army is cracking down on soldiers who go on the record opposing the war.
Specialist Leonard Clark, a National Guardsman, was demoted to private and fined $1,640 for posting anti- war statements on an Internet blog. Clark wrote entries describing the company’s commander as a “glory seeker” and the battalion sergeant major an “inhuman monster”. His last entry before the blog was shut down told how his fellow soldiers were becoming increasingly opposed to the US operation in Iraq.
“The message is clear,” says one reservist who is home for the holidays but has to return and asked not to be identified. “If you want to get out of this man’s Army with an honorable (discharge) and full benefits you better not tell the truth about what is happening in- country.”
But Sgt. Johnathan Wilson, a reservist, got his honorable discharge after he returned home earlier this month and he’s not afraid to talk on the record.
“Iraq is a classic FUBAR,” he says. “The country is out of control and we can’t stop it. Anybody who tries to sell a good news story about the war is blowing it out his ass. We don’t win and eventually we will leave the country in a worse shape than it was when we invaded.”
© Copyright 2005 by Capitol Hill Blue
Posted in accordance with Title 17, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes.
