Free Republic

Join Honest Conservative on NiteCap with Freedom Radio, tonight, April 19, 2009, at 8 PM Eastern. Pat will speak with Greyhawk and Mrs G of the Mudville Gazette and Andi of Spouse Buzz about history of MilBlogs and the military bloggers conference next week in D.C. "Good people sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."Here is the link to the show and the call-in number is (646) 478-5613.

Video at link

You may never have seen either of those pictures before. If so, you are not alone. "American combat soldiers don't want pity." Yon says, "They're ready to fight to the end; they just don't want it to be for naught. They have been fighting for two nations, one of which didn't seem to notice. The Iraqis noticed." "We can win this war," Yon declares. "And if we do it will be a victory of the same magnitude as the fall of the Soviet Union. It will not be a victory for the Republican Party. It will not be a victory...

Stake through Their Hearts Killing al Qaeda March 2008Western Nineveh Province, Iraq The sun was setting over Nineveh as four terrorists driving tons of explosives closed on their targets. On August 14, 2007, the Yezidi villages of Qahtaniya and Jazeera were under attack, but only the terrorists knew it as they drove their trucks straight into the hearts of the communities. The shockwave from detonation far outpaced the speed of sound. Buildings and humans were ripped apart and hurled asunder. Superheated poisonous gases from the explosions gathered the smoke and dust and lofted heavenward, while the second detonation quickly...

ANBAR PROVINCE, IRAQ – The Iraqi town of Al Farris looks like a model Soviet city up close and a rounded square from the sky. Saddam Hussein built it to house workers in the now-defunct weapons factory to the east, and they live in neighborhoods called City 1, City 2, City 3, City 4, and City 5. “Socialist living at its finest,” Sergeant Edward Guerrero said as we rolled through the gates in a Humvee. The place made me think of Libya, where I have been, and North Korea, where I have not.

i've been looking through here http://www4.army.mil/armyimages/ but those are all from training exercises or photo ops. i want to see pictures that are more real, taken by troops in or near combat.

Michael Yon was not a journalist, and he wasn’t sure what a blogger was. He had been in uniform but not in combat, and he wanted to keep it that way. He went to Iraq thinking he would stay for a month, and maybe find a way to write about the war after he got home. Michael Yon, a former Special Forces fighter, writes dispatches and posts photographs from the front lines in Iraq. Instead, he has spent most of the last three years in Iraq, writing prolifically and graphically, and racking up more time embedded with combat units than...

Soldier's final journal. Soldier's story continues after death By MIKE NICHOLS mnichols@journalsentinel.com Posted: Jan. 6, 2008 Mike Nichols E-MAIL Andy Olmsted was too many things to neatly enumerate. He was a husband and a brother and a blogger. He was a son to two of my very good friends. "I don't know if there is an afterlife; I tend to doubt it, to be perfectly honest. But if there is any way possible, Amanda, then I will live up to Delenn's words, somehow, some way. I love you." Services for Andy Olmsted will probably be at Fort Carson in Colorado...

Andy Olmsted by hilzoy Andrew Olmsted, who also posted here as G'Kar, was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andy gave me a post to publish in the event of his death; the last revisions to it were made in July. Andy was a wonderful person: decent, honorable, generous, principled, courageous, sweet, and very funny. The world has a horrible hole in it that nothing can fill. I'm glad Andy -- generous as always -- wrote something for me to publish now, since I have no words at all. Beyond: Andy, I will miss you. My thoughts are with his wife, his...

Fort Carson-based Army Major Andrew Olmsted who wrote a blog from the war for the Rocky Mountain News was killed Thursday in Iraq. He went there to teach members of the Iraqi Army how to defend their country and provide security for citizens. Major Olmsted was a veteran blogger and was determined to make a difference in Iraq. He began writing for RockyMountainNews.com on May 21. He left behind a final blog post on his website AndrewOlmsted.com. No details were available on how the Major Olmsted died.

I suppose I should speak to the circumstances of my death. It would be nice to believe that I died leading men in battle, preferably saving their lives at the cost of my own. More likely I was caught by a marksman or an IED. But if there is an afterlife, I'm telling anyone who asks that I went down surrounded by hundreds of insurgents defending a village composed solely of innocent women and children. It'll be our little secret, ok?

There's an amazing program about soldiers blogging from Iraq on the History Channel right now. I've never started a thread, so I'm sorry if I am breaking any protocol. This show is just too good not to let other people know about it.

Last month Pajamas Media published an in-depth report on the scandal surrounding the “Baghdad Diarist” articles by Scott Thomas Beauchamp in The New Republic. Now PJM’s Bob Owens interviews Major John Cross, who led the U.S. Army’s investigation into Private Beauchamp’s shocking claims. Even more shocking is what Cross reveals below: Among other findings, there is no credible evidence that TNR made any attempt at fact checking prior to publishing the articles. Furthermore, not one of the soldiers interviewed under oath in the investigation corroborated Beauchamp’s story. Click link for more: http://pajamasmedia.com/2007/09/new_republic.php

Part One: The Paradox of Counterinsurgency The principles and imperatives discussed above reveal that COIN presents a complex and often unfamiliar set of missions and considerations for a military commander. In many ways, the conduct of counterinsurgency is counterintuitive to the traditional American view of war—although it has actually formed a substantial part of America’s actual experience.Counterinsurgency December 2006 FM 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5 To know a man, follow his tracks.Anbar Province June, 2007 Iraq and this part of the world are complicated in the way, and by the way, that dysfunction always is “complicated.� Worse, in this labyrinth of history,...

The FReeper Canteen Looks at MILBLOGGINGI have recently become interested in reading milbloggers on the internet.  I was challenged by Cannoneer No. 4 (thank you!) to read these and in addition, to comment on them.  From Cannoneer No. 4's blog... What Can YOU Do? Filed under: milblogger, IO — cannoneerno4 @ 12:20 pm   People who want to “support the troops” ask that question a lot.  What do you WANT to do? Why are you waiting to be told what to do? Why don’t you find something useful to do, and just do it?What IS useful? Pretty much anything that...

Milblogger project: Send an e-mail of support By Michelle Malkin  •  June 20, 2007 09:35 PM Grim at Blackfive interviewed Col. Simcock of Regimental Combat Team 6. The colonel asked Americans to send letters of support to RCT-6: GRIM: Is there anything that you and your Marines need that we could send you?COL. SIMCOCK: (Chuckles.) I’ll tell you what, the one thing that all Marines want to know about — and that includes me and everyone within Regimental Combat Team 6 — we want to know that the American public are behind us. We believe that the actions that we’re taking...

Freelancer Michael Yon Does the Job the MSM Won't Do Posted by Terry Trippany on June 20, 2007 - 10:46. I have been a huge fan of Michael Yon for years. He risks life and limb as an embedded reporter to report the news in Iraq from the soldiers' point of view and he is honest in his assessment. That honesty has often been met with scorn and resistance by some decision makers in the military who in my assessment have been their own worst enemy when it comes to getting the word out about progress as well as the...

Colby Buzzell, whose online diary from the Sunni triangle frontline evolved into the book My War, awarded Blooker prize. An American soldier's violent and darkly comic account of fighting in Iraq has won the "Blooker prize" for best book that began as a blog on the Internet. Colby Buzzell, whose Internet diary became the book My War, started posting online from a Sunni triangle frontline Internet tent as a way to "kill time." The book won the second annual $10,000 prize sponsored by publishing Web site Lulu.com. His blog allowed him to explain the war to readers back home with...

Red State is live blogging the conference President Bush gave a taped pep talk to them, the video is posted There is also a live feed at Mudville Gazette

My Townhall.com column is on the Army's new policy concerning milblogging. For an opposing view, see Joe Carter's response to the widespread objection to the new rules. I hope Joe will consider the arguemnts I make in the column. He's right to worry a great deal about Operational Security, but there's no public record of milblogging leading to loss of life or comrpomise of a plan, though therte is a huge record of the benefits the public has derived from the open policy that has been in force to date. Nor do I think Joe is correct to wonder why...

The most excellent Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room has a great article with lots of milblogger reaction to the new OPSEC regulations that will end military blogging as we know it. Yes, that's right - the end of soldier blogging from the war zones. Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death Noah Shachtman Email 05.02.07 | 2:00 AM 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...

One of my favorite Military Blogs, CDR Salamander, was made one of the finalists for the 2006 Web blogs. I though I would put out a Freep Request on his blogs behalf. Please get out the vote. Heres a discription of his competition below. Voting guide through 15 DEC Ymarsaker, there are three non-voting posts below, so don't get mad. To help everyone review their once a day voting requirements, for "The best 3501-5000 blogs" category I offer the following voting guide. When you click here or the banner to the right side of the page or the bottom of...

Milblogger BlackFive has just released a new book that contains dispatches from our outstanding men and women of the US military who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. If it weren't for the milbloggers much of the good news from Iraq and Afghanistan would never become widely known by the American people. --- It is the work of over 50 Americans who tell their stories about the experiences around the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In it you will meet: * The Warriors. Snipers, tankers, grunts. Readers who have never heard a shot fired in anger will come closer to...

J.P. Borda started a Web log during his 2004 National Guard deployment in Afghanistan to keep in touch with his family. But when he got home, he decided it was the mainstream media that was out of touch with the war. "You hear so much about what's going wrong," he says. "It gets hard to hear after a while when there's so much good going on." Mr. Borda, a specialist, read other soldiers' blogs and found he wasn't alone. Hundreds of other troops and veterans were blogging world-wide, and many focused on a common enemy: journalists. The 31-year-old software analyst,...

The other side of FOB Martello. Click image to view. An audio recording of a press conference with Colonel Chris Vernon on Operation Mountain Thrust is also available. Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan: On Saturday night, Charlie Company from the 1st Battalion of the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry moved from Forward Operating Base Martello to the "430 compound", a small, austere ANP base infested with large ants and adorned with a well in the center. The Canadian soldiers took advantage of the rare running water to wash up from the dust bowl at FOB Martello. The Afghan National Police guarded...

I need your help: This John Murtha thing has me so fired up that, in the spirit of Shakespeare, I've decided to "kill him with kindness" by sending Mr. Murtha a belated Memorial Day gift...

Why I Fight I want to start something on my blog that I can continue on a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly basis. I'm going to start with my personal story that led me to join the military, and I'm hoping to get some readers email me with theirs. I will share the stories I feel everyone should hear about. I'm sure there are plenty of amazing and moving stories about what series of events led them to join the United States military. I want to know yours!Here's mine: I still remember exactly where I was when I first heard we...

When you steal from a MilBlogger Posted By Blackfive ...you're going to get busted. I believe that many of you will recognize the photo on the cover of Shock Magazine. [see below] That's right. Stolen from Michael Yon. When I asked about it, Mike sends: The publisher, HFM, is one of the largest media conglomerates in the world with over 200 magazines and newspapers in 33 countries. This is a major launch with an initial print run of 300,000. Personally, I think Mike is more pissed about the photo being used for some kind of political agenda than getting ripped...

As the war in Iraq and the national debate over it continue, military-themed American bloggers have been voicing their support for U.S. troops and, in most cases, the war itself.Both John Donovan, whose milblog is at http://www.thedonovan.com, and "Beth," who runs Fuzzilicious Thinking, point out that connectivity is the key. Not all milblogs get large volumes of traffic, but even the seldom-read are often connected to other blogs that have larger readerships or are in turn read by those with access to a greater audience. Beth calls herself the "idea person" behind Project Valour IT, which provides voice-activated laptop computers...

Soldiers' online journals come under increased scrutiny By Mike Spector Iraq War veteran Colby Buzzell, at home in Los Angeles. He antagonized superiors with his frank Web log posts about Army life in Mosul. (Courtesy of Colby Buzzell) Army Spc. Colby Buzzell in Iraq. Commanders scrutinized his Web log after he posted details of a battle in Mosul. (Courtesy of Colby Buzzell) Army Spc. Colby Buzzell returned from a firefight in Mosul, Iraq, on Aug. 4, 2004, and collapsed on his bed, drained from the most intense combat of his tour.The next day, Buzzell headed to his base’s Internet cafe...

"Tainted" Embeds and the role of MilBloggers One of the big issues at the MiBlogger Conference was, of course, bias in the media. While there are those who will contest such claims, it seems pretty clear to Murdoc that (at the very least) the mainstream media suffers from gross ignorance of military strategy, tactics, and history. This, of course, is gross generalization, and there are exceptions to the rule. But the low number of exceptions do a lot to prove said rule. The mainstream media suffers from gross ignorance of military strategy, tactics, and history.The third panel at the conference,...

OK FRiends and PW's, we are here and we are cocked locked, and ready to rock.

Greetings,  Today we open a new frontier.  My site gets much traffic and exposure, making this an excellent venue for our people in harm's way to tell their stories.  Please click here http://flf.michaelyon-online.com/ for our first story from a soldier in Iraq.  The story is well written and complete with photos.   If you know someone at war who would like to submit a story to FLF, many people are waiting to read it.  Photographs are encouraged.   Please spread the word about the Frontline Forum--there are graphic links and related resources in the Press Room off the FLF main page.      Respectfully,     Michael...

I used to think blogs would transform ideologues into nonpartisan truth-seekers. Man, was I wrong.On December 13, 2001, I posted an essay on my personal weblog titled “Two Ships Passing in the New Media Night,” in which I contrasted the energetic, proletariat-embracing exultations of rising blog superstar Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds with the dreary, public-distrusting defensiveness of then–Los Angeles Times columnist John Balzar. I had launched my blog (or shall I say “warblog,” which is what I named it, apparently coining a term I’ve come to loathe) five days after the September 11 massacre and almost immediately found myself swept up...

The U.S. armed forces have joined the Internet’s fast-growing blogosphere. U.S. Central Command is working with more than 250 bloggers "to try to disseminate news about the good work being done by U.S. forces in the global war on terror." (Defense Link News). That effort says CENTCOM--which has its own website for news releases, data and imagery--has reached more than 17 million online readers to date. From his desk at CENTCOM headquarters, Army Reserve Spc. Claude Flowers of the 304th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment from Kent, Wash., fights in the global war on terrorism daily in his own way. It...

MACDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla., March 2, 2006 – The widespread use of Web logs, or "blogs," by online writers has proliferated information on topics as varied as the authors. Blogs, in essence, are online journals or forums for their authors, known as "bloggers." Public affairs officials here said thousands of blogs are created each day, and they estimate that more than 21 million blogs are posted on the World Wide Web today. Blogs sometimes include information -- accurate and otherwise -- about the U.S. military's global war on terror. U.S. Central Command officials here took notice and created a...

Here we are again with this week’s successes with respect to finding, identifying, and neutralizing a threat the media likes to categorize as a hopeless cause. The area of IEDs is just another example of the successes we’re having in the war in Iraq against terrorism. Here we go: For those that don’t know, 1st Brigade Combat Team soldiers are training an Iraqi Combat Engineer unit to be IED hunters. These soldiers are highly motivated to fight IEDs and insurgents and love working with Coalition Forces to learn how to combat this menace. One [Iraqi] soldier was on his day...

He didn't have to go, it wasn't his job and nobody paid him to do it. But Michael Yon says he went to Iraq because he wanted to see for himself what was going on. The 41-year-old former Army Green Beret, self-published author and world traveler didn't know exactly what he was going to do when he got to the war zone last year, nor did he have any particular plans to report what he saw to the world at-large. But that's what he did. After getting himself embedded as a freelance journalist with troops last year, he used his...

I have been reading several Iraqi blogs over the last year, and two in particular because my daughter served a year as a US Army Combat Medic in Mosul. They are from a father and daughter living in Mosul, and are titled 'Citizen of Mosul', and 'A Star from Mosul', respectively. The daughter just announced that she is now a paid contributer to the NYT Opinion page. Interstingly enough, a couple of past posts have now disappeared from their sites, posts in which she openly stated her support for the insurgents who kill American soldiers. I was not surprised that...

Guilt by association. It is a common tool used to discredit those deemed a threat to the established order. Recently, I've found myself on the receiving end of such a tactic courtesy of a piece by Jonathan Finer and Douglas Struck in the Washington Post. On the day after Christmas, the Washington Post featured an article titled "Bloggers, Money Now Weapons in Information War — U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," of which my recent embed in Iraq was the subject of scrutiny as a military-information operation. It is a fact-challenged article that manages...

It was the journalistic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. The targets of Washington Post reporters Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck were two of journalism's favorites: Web loggers and the U.S. military. "Bloggers, Money, Now Weapons in Information War," read the headline over their story, which appeared last Monday. "U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," the subhed said. "Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn't refuse," the story began. The insinuation...

Jack Kelly: Shooting the new messenger An article about blogger Bill Roggio shows mainstream media running scared Sunday, January 01, 2006 It was the journalistic equivalent of a drive-by shooting. The targets of Washington Post reporters Jonathan Finer and Doug Struck were two of journalism's favorites: Web loggers and the U.S. military.           "Bloggers, Money, Now Weapons in Information War," read the headline over their story, which appeared Monday. "U.S. Recruits Advocates to the Front, Pays Iraqi TV Stations for Coverage," the subhed said. "Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey...

The war in Vietnam is often referred to as the first war on television, and the wars in Afghanistan and now in Iraq will be known as the first wars to be blogged. A new generation of soldier bloggers in the US, known as milbloggers, are both fighting in the field and writing about their experiences. It is opening up a new window on modern warfare and is creating a new genre of war-time writing. However, some of these pioneering frontline bloggers fear that the golden age of milblogging has already passed as military officials begin to clamp down on...

In the past, the experiences of war have produced poetry and novels and memoirs. The War on Terror is different: we're seeing through a new set of eyes, a new kind of literature. In real time, on the Internet, officers and enlisted men and women are chronicling the war on weblogs. As the number of blogs continue to rise dramatically, blogging’s advent – the effect of which has been likened to that of the printing press on the Reformation - is giving the world the opportunity to experience the world’s latest war – the War on Terror – first hand....

The al Qaeda leadership in Iraq.... ....continues to suffer important losses and the US media continues to ignore them as they glorify the useless violence of the suicide missions, which are done purely for propaganda value and accomplish no important goals. The coalition keeps taking out the top leadership forcing the terrorists to improvise and replace constantly. How much longer they can keep this up is an open question, but the noose is tightening and they are being crowded into smaller and smaller areas of Iraq. UPDATE: The Centcom release reveals that a "close associate" led coalition forces to Azzam.Multiple...

Reading the blogs of troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is a way many people are able to get an unprecedented view into the lives of soldiers in war. I wanted to list some resources here for FReepers who might like to read them. Finding blogs The fastest way to find blogs written by troops now serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is to go to any of these Web sites and explore their links to "milblogs" or soldier blogs : www.mudvillegazette.com www.blackfive.net www.iraqfiles.com www.bloggersforfreedom.com www.indepundit.com

.Rise of the MilblogsSome of the best sources of information on the war are from the people actually fighting it--and their blogs.by Hugh Hewitt 03/12/2004 12:00:00 AM AS THE WAR enters a phase where most of the fighting is far removed from the networks' cameras, it gets harder and harder to find reliable news on the conflict's many fronts.Unless you read the milblogs, that is. "Milblogs" is short for "military blogs"--online journals run by active duty military or reservists who have returned to civilian life for the time being. These first person accounts of the world and the nation through...