Blogs have a great deal of practical value to the Pentagon.
To begin with, they can act as librarians of specialized threat and military information, with what could be a useful means of disseminating that information to military personnel in a concise and readable manner. A site like Strategy Page is almost a daily international military newspaper, filled with highly useful data for military personnel about friendly and enemy forces.
Second, they are much more capable of analyzing military information than are the uneducated main stream media (MSM). A single writer may have the equivalent of dozens of editors, scrupulously fact checking any assertion or opinion.
Third, bloggers also pick up on unauthorized or inappropriate information being disseminated. This points the finger right at leakers, propagandists, and fifth columnists. Though they cannot un-publish the information, they can be of great help stopping future leaks and mission compromising revelations.
For this reason, the Pentagon should have a special office not unlike a press office, but more complex. To start with, it should disseminate information in a blog-friendly format.
But far more importantly, it needs to collate information.
That is, a single event may result in a dozen different news stories, but there is no discrimination available that tells bloggers that they are from the same event, and not just similar events. A Pentagon blog office would immeasurably aid with the dissemination of accurate information, stripped of erroneous interpolation, extrapolation, background information and opinion.
Basically assigning a data number to a particular information release, Pentagon or private. Then, news stories based on that information can be analyzed for details, accuracy, bias, and outright lies. The Pentagon should not be bashful at all at identifying anti-military and anti-American slants to the news.
Media correspondents should not only be rated by the Pentagon, but the public should see that information. The Pentagon might even have a website critique of journalists, pointing out errors in their writings like a schoolteacher would correct for grammar. Text that is red is incorrect, text that is blue is opinion, text in green is factlessly judgmental, and text in orange is plagiarized.
But the bottom line is that bloggers can be a useful civilian and prior-service military source of information, they can offer morale and material support, and they can break the monopoly of information by the MSM.
It's happening.