Dont' Forget to Pack the Sunglasses

This morning was exceptionally bizarre as Steve Inskeep talks to Noah Shachtman of editor of a blog for Wired Magazine. They are discussing the Pentagon's clampdown on online postings by soldiers and employees of the DOD and military personnel's access to various online sites.

Shactman has this to say of milbloggers: "These guys are the most authentic, most honest voices out there, and they’re some of the best sources you’ll find on how progress on the ground is going." Excuse me: Most authentic? Most honest? No way. Maybe most authentic of what it's like for that particular soldier. Definitely, some honest, some just plain old b.s. - and some probably written by an employee of the Pentagon in the disinformation business. Frankly there's a whiff of warrior-worship in Shactman's comments, a scary attitude that runs through a lot of our burgeoning permanent(long)-war society.

The best-worst part of this report was when Shactman tells us the real reason that the Pentagon is implementing these new restrictions on information:

"What they’re concerned about is that somehow al-Qaeda is going to piece together a word from this blog and two sentences from that blog and piece it all together into some picture that’s going to spell doom for American interests in Iraq lets say."

Seriously, that's about the dumbest, most gullible take on an obvious move to stop the uncensored flow of information in and out of Iraq as the US disaster there becomes more and more obvious, painful, and gruesome.

And does Inskeep challenge this assertion? No way, instead he "randomly" reads a post from a milblog that Schactman has recommended to him: "You really have to come here to understand how well things are going, at least in Anbar....we are creaming these fools." Wow...hold everything...change in travel plans this summer...let's pack up the kids and head to sunny Anbar...maybe on the way we'll stroll through a market in Baghdad and pickup some fruit and veggies -- just like at a market in Indiana in the summertime. Swwweeet!