(CommonConservative.com) At the end of July, a story broke big across the blogosphere. Those on the starboard side of the ‘Sphere questioned it and roundly condemned it. Those on the Left embraced it; proclaimed it Gospel truth, and accused anyone who questioned it was, well, a "chickenhawk." As August opened up, two men from the Left-leaning Brookings Institute took an eight-day trip to Baghdad to witness how the "surge" was going. Their report took the form of an op-ed in the New York Times. It was based on fact and their experiences in country, but was rejected by the Left as some form of propaganda. The Right applauded the op-ed as a sign that even though the virulent Left disliked the war, they had at least begun to accept the fact the "surge" was working. Two different stories, and two very different reactions are the reason why there is some serious intellectual dishonesty on the Left.

On July 18th Michael Goldfarb from the Weekly Standard picked up on a piece from The New Republic written by their "Baghdad Diarist." This soldier wrote under the pseudonym of "Scott Thomas." We now know the soldier’s name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp, and that he was a previously busted in rank back down to a Private. The stories he had been telling, especially in his piece titled "Shock Troops," (subscription required) painted a bad picture of the troops serving in Iraq. Abusive, crass, and even sacrilegious at times, the troops were shown to act more like animals than professional soldiers.

Mr. Goldfarb put out a call to milbloggers (bloggers that, for the most part, observe and comment on aspects of the military, especially the war) to help disseminate the piece Private Beauchamp wrote. Needless to say, even if one has little military experience, the piece did not pass the smell test. There were discrepancies that just could not be refuted by Private Beauchamp; details that raised the warning flag in just about every milblogger’s head. Those flags led to more and more being questioned about his story, and before long The New Republic had a problem on it’s hands.

Read the entire story here.

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(The D-Ring) NETCOM, the Army command responsible for the maintenance and preservation of the military’s online network, has blocked access to Blogger, Google’s popular blogging platform, from government computers, according to Army employees.

Sources tell The D-Ring that Blogger blogs (which can easily be identified because they have the word “blogspot” in their Web address) were blocked for “security reasons” — there was concern about “malicious code” associated with Blogger blogs. A spokesman for NETCOM denies that they are blocking Blogger.

A public affairs representative for Joint Task Force - Global Network Operations, which oversees the global information grid, also said that Blogger was not one of the sites that was being blocked, and suggested that the problem might be due to local network restrictions.

Despite the official insistence that Blogger is not being screened, a D-Ring investigation found that Army employees at various installations on the East and West coasts, as well as the Midwest, could not access Blogger blogs, suggesting that the problem extends beyond network restrictions imposed locally by installation commanders.

Read the entire story here.

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(SBS - WORLD NEWS AUSTRALIA) Britain's military has denied trying to silence its own soldiers after issuing a directive effectively cracking down on the use of blogs and social networking websites.

The June order prohibited soldiers from communicating about defence matters "via a blog, podcast or other shared text, audio or video" or by contributing "to any online community ... bulletin board, wiki, online social network, or multiplayer game."

The order got little attention until it was posted on Thursday on an internet forum popular with military personnel called the British Army Rumour Service.

Read the entire story here.

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(Ars Technica) A row has been brewing in the UK over talk of a "blogging ban" instituted by the UK Ministry of Defence. The Guardian intially reported that the government was telling all soldiers not to "blog, take part in surveys, speak in public, post on bulletin boards, play in multi-player computer games, or send text messages or photographs without the permission of a superior if the information they use concerns matters of defence." The military says it's much ado about nothing.

Soldiers are also forbidden from posting images or video clips from their time in service, and their public communications should, "where possible, enhance the reputation of defence." But "telling the truth" is important too, even when it affects the military's reputation, and some soldiers see the regulations as a heavy-handed attempt to prevent them from offering an unvarnished grunt's perspective, according to the paper.

Read the entire story here. 

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(Associated Press) NEW YORK - A magazine gets a hot story straight from a soldier in Iraq and publishes his writing, complete with gory details, under a pseudonym. The stories are chilling: An Iraqi boy befriends American troops and later has his tongue cut out by insurgents. Soldiers mock a disfigured woman sitting near them in a dining hall. As a diversion, soldiers run over dogs with armored personnel carriers. Compelling stuff, and, according to the Army, not true.

Three articles by the soldier have run since January in The New Republic, a liberal magazine with a small circulation owned by Canadian company CanWest Corp. The stories, which ran under the name "Scott Thomas," were called into question by The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine with a small circulation owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. The Standard last month challenged bloggers to check the dispatches.

Read the entire story here.

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Buddhist Military Sangha, Jeanette Shin, United States, Online resource for Buddhists in the US armed forc..., 06 Aug 2007

Day by Day Voyage "Into The Blue", Nicole Santos, United States, I'm joining the military, wanna watch?!, 06 Aug 2007

Steeljaw Scribe, Steeljaw Scribe, United States, Notes and commentary on things present, reflection..., 06 Aug 2007

Rosemary's Thoughts, Rosemary, United States, Some military news, WWIV news, politics, and a lit..., 05 Aug 2007

Navy Life - GearAdrift.com, Mike, United States, A humorous look at life in the Navy. Features Nav..., 04 Aug 2007

Chinese Bandit Recon LRRP Team 1st Bn (ABN) 8th Cav 1965-66, RANGER Jerry Conners, United States, Awarded two Presidential Unit Citations for Extrao..., 04 Aug 2007

Bill and Bob's Excellent Afghan Adventure, Not specified, Afghanistan, Citizen soldier with 25 years of service. Voluntee..., 03 Aug 2007

A German-American Friendship Bracelet, Willie and Rudi, Germany, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center and Wounded Warr..., 02 Aug 2007

What? Mermaids?, Lala, United States, Adventures of a military girlfriend-- soon to be f..., 30 Jul 2007

Crossing the T, Girl with Gratitude, United States, Just a girl who is grateful to those willing to do..., 30 Jul 2007

Army Chaplaincy, Daniel Sparks, United States, News and information about the U.S. Army Chaplain ..., 30 Jul 2007

Frontier Battles, Daniel Sauerwein, William F. Sauerwein, United States, This site deals with the military and general hist..., 24 Jul 2007

Civil War History, Daniel Sauerwein, William F. Sauerwein, United States, This site covers the history of the American Civil..., 24 Jul 2007

Military History Blog, Daniel Sauerwein, William F. Sauerwein, Buck Sargent, Yan Mann, United States, Blogging about the battlefield since 2005 This ..., 24 Jul 2007

Day to Day Voyage, Nicole Santos, United States, my day to day experiences as i go through the proc..., 23 Jul 2007

Debbi's Dribble, Debbi Dresser, United States, Day to Day Dribble of a Proud Army Mom who wants t..., 23 Jul 2007

VA Joe . com, VA Joe, United States, A blog posting round-ups from milblogs and guest m..., 20 Jul 2007

Art of War Past, Present, and Future, Military Student, United States, For all things military history. A look at the blu..., 20 Jul 2007

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(Slate) Bloggers take sides in the Weekly Standard vs. New Republic battle over the "Baghdad Diarist," and they mull bad news from Basra.

Baghdad fabulist? It looks like the New Republic might have another Stephen Glass on its hands. The Weekly Standard's WorldwideStandard editor Michael Goldfarb reported that Army Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp has admitted to fibbing his way through three pseudonymous dispatches (subscription required) that TNR published between January and July. Goldfarb also writes that an Army investigation has debunked Beauchamp's claims. But TNR is standing by its man: A brief posting on The Plank today simply says the Army won't confirm Goldfarb's allegations. Both publications cite the same source—Maj. Steven F. Lamb. The Weekly Standard follows up on TNR's statement by sticking to its story; the Columbia (Mo.) Tribune backs up Goldfarb. It all started last month when Goldfarb mobilized bloggers to check the veracity of Beauchamp's most recent article. Last week, the editors defended Beauchamp, who's married to a TNR staffer.

Read the entire story here.

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(AEI) On the night of June 18 and the early morning of June 19, U.S. and Iraqi forces launched Operation Arrowhead Ripper in Iraq's Diyala province. Targeted at the city of Baqubah, which the now-deceased al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Masab al-Zarqawi proclaimed his own capital of the "Islamic State of Iraq" in October, the goal of the operation was to trap and destroy the insurgents who have run the city of some 250,000 residents for more than a year.

Representing part of Gen. David Petraeus' plan to pacify the "Baghdad belts" that have served as way stations for terrorism attacks inside the capital, Arrowhead Ripper is a key test of the surge of American troops to Iraq. The operation has also turned out to be an excellent palette for milblogging, both from the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division, which provided the central striking force of the offensive, and from freelance journalists.

The 3-2 Strykers have cut a distinguished role in the history of milblogging. Colby Buzzell, the author of the blog-to-book My War: Killing Time in Iraq, was with the unit in Mosul three years ago, where his gritty description of a running gunfight with insurgents earned accolades online and a reprimand from his command. Today, the Strykers are keeping up the Colby tradition through a trio of blogs that follow the brigade.

Read the entire story here.

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I haven't had much time to write lately because of mission stuff, so in the meantime here's more video of my 1 year old son back in the States rocking to his iPod.  Neighbors used to say my dog was the cutest thing they had ever seen because he could walk on two legs like a person and bark "I wuv u", but that's just because they haven't seen this video.  There's really nothing cuter.  Unless of course a squad of baby panda bear cubs dressed in firemen outfits start driving across the backgroud in toy trucks. 

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(NewsBusters) In an email to libertarian blog Q and O, Columbia Journalism Review writer Paul McLeary corrected his remarks that stated milbloggers preferred to leave fighting for their country to others. He said he "really stepped in it" and was "careless in [his] choice of wording." If only the New York Times would correct their mistakes as publicly and clearly as McLeary did.

Based on his explanation, it appears he said he wasn't calling milbloggers chickenhawks, he was calling bloggers like Hugh Hewitt chickenhawks and "didn't take the time to clearly define what (he) was talking about."

He also fell back on popular lefty tactics that are designed to eliminate opposing opinions. In addition to the chickenhawk gambit, McLeary insisted that writers should physically set foot in Iraq and Afghanistan, limiting discussion to only those reporters and bloggers who have been to those countries, unless, of course, the writer has an anti-military or anti-war position. Good thing that NewsBusters' Mark Finklestein has been to Iraq!

Read the entire story here.

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(Jawa Report)  Yet another liberal makes an ass of himself while trying to defend Private Beauchamp.

He tries to "chickenhawk" conservative bloggers (a popular tactic suggesting that nobody but the military is allowed to support the military), but unfortunately for this preening jackass, he has no idea what he's talking about (par for the course of the leftarded this go round)…

Read the entire story here.

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(Human Events) Left-leaning The New Republic (TNR) gained new notoriety in recent weeks by  publishing of a trio of columns by the “Baghdad Diarist,” an American soldier who was serving in Baghdad and who wrote under the admitted pseudonym “Scott Thomas.” The stories written by Thomas were shocking and distasteful, telling of actions by soldiers in his unit, such as the exhumation of children’s skeletons (and the wearing of one of their skulls “like a crown”), the purposeful running over of dogs with armored vehicles, and the ridiculing of a female contractor for her disfigured appearance, which was purportedly caused by an IED blast.

The “milblogging” (military blogging) community, along with publications like The Weekly Standard, reacted almost immediately to Thomas’s claims, shooting holes in his stories and calling into question the veracity not only of his narrative, but also of his claim to be a soldier serving in Iraq.

Read the entire story here.

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(Town Hall)  The posters at the FreeRepublic thread are very rough on the soldier, but most of the ire should be directed at the Beltway geniuses at the New Republic who allowed this young man to publish a column that would obviously lead to the controversy it quickly ignited, as well as to the blowback from his fellow soldiers for the general slander he perpetrated. Having to use a pseudonym in an era of milblogging was the obvious giveaway that the piece would start an investigation.

Read the entire story here.

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I'm very thankful for technology.  Seeing videos of my kids that my wife sends, really makes my deployment easier.   He really is cute.  I know I've said the same thing before, but I'm still convinced my wife gave birth to a Care Bear. Watch the video. It's science.

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(ISN Security Watch) Due to the unclear language and a lack of enforcement capabilities from overworked superiors as well as initial problems with dissemination of the regulation, the US Army's new restriction on blogs and other written items placed in public forums is unlikely to accomplish its purpose of more tightly controlling the flow of information from the war zone to the public via the internet.

According to Army Regulation (AR) 530-1, soldiers are required to discuss the Operational Security (OPSEC) implications of the items they intend to publish on their blogs with their superiors and then police themselves in terms of what to include and what to censor. The regulation leaves open enforcement options and the severity of that enforcement and could result in some units having each blog posting inspected before it goes up.

Read the entire story here.

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(VA Mortgage Center.com) by Troy Steward  This blog entry must be read in order. First read JP’s list and then read one of his reader’s rebuttal lists. My Comments and actual blog entry are at the end.

The following is what my friend JP calls the New and Improved Golden Rules of Care Packages. I haven’t talked to him specifically about this list, but from knowing him the way I do it is half-jokingly and half-serious in its content.

Read the entire story here.

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(American Thinker Blog) Accompanying TIME/CNN's current online article by Michael Duffy entitled, "How to leave Iraq," and reportedly on the cover of the TIME print edition, is an illustration graphically demonstrating how limited these so-called news organizations' knowledge of the American military happens to be. The "last helicopter out" a vision harking back to Vietnam and beloved of the Mainstream Media, in this case just happens to be Russian, an MI-24 Hind gunship, according to the folks over at Blackfive, a leading milblog where contributors tend to know what they are talking about when it comes to things military, unlike the mainstream Media weenies.

Read the entire story here.

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(NewsBusters) The hatred for America's military emanating from the left in this nation reached a new low on Thursday when a blog was posted at Daily Kos entitled "KILLITARY: Are America's Armed Forces Creating Serial Killers and Mass Murderers?

In it, Corey Mitchell, a crime author and editor of In Cold Blog, addressed the "list of serial killers and mass murderers who have spent time in the military" while making the case that "a seemingly normal, everyday, All-American soldier [can] turn into a brain scooping cell phone camera posing beast."

Read the entire story here.

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Julian's prayer.For Daddy

 

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(The Philadelphia Inquirer) But the Internet furor stirred by the shooting has been unmistakable. The incident quickly became a cause celebre, fanned by a host of conservative and military bloggers across the country as well as national columnist Michelle Malkin, who claimed that Schrieken had been targeted by an antiwar zealot.

"I've watched the blogs," said Willingboro police spokesman Joe Dey. "It picked up fire."

Read the entire story here.

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