<$BlogRSDUrl$>

My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2007-05-02

As Much As The Soldiers Deserve To Win The War . . .

I often think the Pentagon itself deserves to lose.

courtesy CQ

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. . . .

"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."

Who in the HELL is in charge of the public affairs office at the Pentagon?

I've watched, with growing concern, for the last five years as the military seems to be able to win every engagement on the battlefield (until it throws handcuffs on our soldiers) BUT LOSE EVERY ENGAGEMENT IN THE PRESS. It's distressing how clueless the military is about how to win a public relations war. I thought, you know, maybe they're just taking their cues from the White House, which has been similarly inept at making its case for the ongoing War, but this action takes that to a whole new level.

Clearly . . .CLEARLY . . . the brass at the Pentagon failed to learn THE most important lesson of Vietnam: America only loses wars at home, never in the field.

Our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines deserve better than this. Much better.
Posted by: Michael / 5/02/2007 11:54:00 PM

Weblog Commenting by HaloScan.com

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?