The Army Surges Against Military Bloggers

The only surge that seems to be working in Iraq is the one by the Army against its own members who have blogs. They've issued new regulations that will effectively shut down most active duty bloggers:

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.

Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.

The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.

"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."

Big mistake. Some of the best reporting of the war was coming from active duty blogs, and by silencing them, it will lead many to believe that things are even worse over there than reported and the Army is trying to cover that up. With a media and Congress already promoting defeat and surrender, the last thing the Army needs is to silence the only good news getting out of the country.