Love letter from the military: Journal 1/26/07
I received an e-mail today from the “United States Central Command Public Affair’s department” regarding this website. At first I was a bit paniced trying to remember all that I had written and if I had posted some sort of sensitive government information. “Loose lips sink ships” and all that.
But then after reading it a few times I got a sense that it was more of a publicity sceme on the military’s part rather than concern for informational awareness.
Excerts from the e-mail:
“Our purpose is to reach out to the blogisphere, build relationships with each other and then be able to pass valuable information threw them to their readers.”
“…remember there are still Soldiers fighting and dying. We need to get the real story out. The story the MSW confidently chooses to pass on. Please take some time and visit our website. We can offer you and your readers up-to-date press release , video and a emailed weekly electronic newsletter that provides a snapshot of the weeks events.”
Spelling and grammatical errors aside, I get the sense that the military is starting to feel like that geeky kid who’s left out of dodge ball or something. They’re finally starting to realize the power of personal blogs especially those blogs coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. And they may be a bit nervous at the real stories being told.
Do they think perhaps that bloggers like myself might make them look bad?? I think military bloggers may possibly be the most honest bloggers of all. We represent the military in both positive and negative light but the bottom line is that it’s honest. It’s not the story that the military “confidently chooses” to tell. It’s the REAL story, good and bad.
We are all briefed prior to deployment on the importance of informational security. I know that I always took that very seriously. In fact, I felt that it hindered quite a lot that I could have written about while I was overseas. I think that the Central Command has a very valid concern in censoring information that may put people’s lives at risk, but I also think there’s another side to their concern.
The last thing written in the e-mail is a request to place the United States Central Command logo on my website so that people can “get the real story” from their site.
I couldn’t help but laugh a bit at the effort set forth in this e-mail. It’s the way it seems the military is trying to jump on the blogisphere band wagon… get our readers to pay attention to them… perhaps even push military propaganda?
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Comments
i also have a hard time buying the miltarys dubious efforts to get you to include thier link…
we’re all tired of the sanitized prescreened food for the soul feel good huggy articles on how we’re “winning the war” and prefer to keep our senses in tune with honest writing like yours and your comrades.
keep blogs link free!
I think that i appreciated you using a very Navy rooted saying “loose lips sink ships” thank you.
Simone Rubin on 
Keith on 
It sounds like you hit the nail right on the head with your assumption of their intentions.