A LITTLE BIT OF TRUTH

Brass Tells Troops: Defend Freedom, But Don't Exercise It

Paul Rieckhoff
Bullets were pinging off our armor all over our vehicle, and you could hear multiple RPGs being fired and flying through the air and impacting all around us. All sorts of crazy insane Hollywood explosions... I've never felt fear like this. I was like, this is it, I'm going to die.
That's a quote from Colby Buzzell, posted to his blog My War while he was serving as an Army Specialist in Mosul. Buzzell's blog would later become the core of a critically-acclaimed book with the same title. Over here almost every single morning begins with violence, explosions, and people being killed. Over here the locals can't make enough money because it is so unsafe to be out and working... In Iraq there are some who want only to see their children grow up, to grow old with their loved ones.That's from Army translator Zachary Scott-Singley, who blogged during his second tour in Iraq. When the most of the media was replaying shock-and-awe footage or regurgitating Pentagon talking points from the safety of the Green Zone, the best Iraq War reporting was coming from the troops themselves. Soldiers like Colby and Zachary were posting raw, first-hand accounts of the war: street patrols, house-to-house searches and neighborhood checkpoints. Their milblogs were a wake-up call: the Iraq war was being fought on a human scale, and with a human cost. Back at home, Americans are finally recognizing what the troops on the ground have been trying to explain for years. But we're not hearing much from the milbloggers anymore, because the Army has been cracking down on the troops blogging from inside Iraq. How ironic. The Army brass doesn't trust our troops - the ones we've asked to defend our freedom and sent to free another people halfway around the globe - to exercise their own freedom responsibly.The explanation is that the Army is looking out for operational security. Operational security, or OPSEC, is the military term for preventing the spread of information that might help our enemies improve their tactics. And it's no joke. Anyone who has served in Iraq will remember the terrible results when insurgents discovered the inadequacy of our body armor, found the weaknesses of our Humvees, or predicted our patrol routes. No soldier wants to contribute to enemy's body of knowledge through a thoughtless word or email. We know that OPSEC is, quite literally, a matter of life and death.But the Army's sweeping new policy isn't just aimed at keeping vital operational details off the Internet. The new regulations say that a soldier must:"Consult with their immediate supervisor and their OPSEC Officer for an OPSEC review prior to publishing or posting information in a public forum. [...] This includes, but is not limited to letters, resumes, articles for publication, electronic mail (e-mail), Web site postings, web log (blog) postings, discussion in Internet information forums, discussion in Internet message boards or other forms of dissemination or documentation."
That sounds like the Army wants to approve every single email or blog comment sent by any of the 154,000 troops in Iraq. Of course, the Army's public affairs machine has since backtracked, via a press release:
"In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate supervisor and Operations Security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that Soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public forum."But it doesn't matter what the Army's public affairs told the media. The unclear and broad regulations still stand. The new rules will have a chilling effect on troops trying responsibly to share their experiences with their families and communities back home. In fact, the rules are just vague enough to make even the most conscientious milbloggers wonder if they've crossed the Army's vague new line. Many, perhaps most, will choose not to take the risk.Sadly, the wholesale silencing of military bloggers won't keep American tactics from the insurgency. The ability of our enemies to learn and adapt is well-documented. But the Army's censorship will keep the world from hearing troops' stories and learning about what is really happening on the ground. And that, too, is dangerous to our cause - as military analyst and Iraq veteran Phil Carter has documented in Slate Magazine.
Just as we did at the start of the war, we need now to hear directly from the troops if we are going to understand what's actually happening on the ground in Iraq... and what few courses of action we have left.
And thanks to the morale-crushing new regulation that forbids our troops serving multiple tours from watching "Lazy Sunday" and Nora the Piano-Playing Cat, there'll be plenty of time for them to write blogs.
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