*US Military 'Shuts Down' Soldiers' Blogs

*US Military 'Shuts Down' Soldiers' Blogs
* By Joseph Mallia
Newsday

Monday 02 January 2006

/*Troops are detailing their experiences in online journals, but
military says some are revealing too much.*/

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 U.S.
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 U.S. 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 U.S.
troops, said Capt. Dan Rice, of Manhattan, who served in Tikrit for 18
months with the U.S. 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 U.S. 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, D.C.,
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 U.S. 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."