This is a shortsighted myopic design that is likely the result of older generational bias against the tremendous tool that is the internet. Instead of harvesting the energy and opportunity present in the supportive communications from the Military community we have silenced yet more voices to the delight of the Non-DoD and thus criticaly skewed liberal bias.
I can't prove the shutdown, but I fear it is truth to DoD employees....As I have noted here before
Military Blogs are being monitored for content – this should come as no surprise… it makes absolute sense that any entity will monitor information flow, opinion, content and will exploit such information whenever possible. In the current conflict that we face it is a sure bet that US, International and enemy personnel monitor all information sources to include Blogs.
Some blogs have stated that this monitoring is somehow a restriction of Blog site freedom of speech… an draconian suppression of the “truth”. I recently experienced the phenomenon with this blog of receiving such monitoring. I will say, there is some intimidation being felt as a mil-bloggers when a military agency “contacts “ the Blog site and offers an alternate point of view or a link to their site. You may have noted the addition of Military sites to several Bloggers lately as they are contacted by such monitoring efforts. The Military establishment efforts are clumsy and becoming increasingly indefensable if an attempt at restricting the reading of opinion - what is next - the shutdown of the opinion page in the Army times?.
I have no doubt that the Defense establishment has likely shut down access to Blog sites as they have acknowledged was done for MySpace, You Tube... It may be done again under the radar of the press this time as a heavy handed local policy or enforcement of the DoD warning that includes a section specifically about blogs.
What is disturbing to me is the sense that opinion, comments on subjective matters such as unit morale, comments regarding the Iraq War in general and other individual opinion topics may be subject to censure. My Fellow Mil-Bloggers all have different views and opinions – the sum of which would paint a pretty accurate picture of soldier and Military oriented public opinion.
We should allow them the right to voice opinion and comment with the caveat that the views expressed are their own on matters of their own choosing when security is not compromised. Commanders should insure that local PAO efforts do not sanitize information within this policy to the point of being the "party line" merely for the sake of conformity to Senior Leadership views. I think we would find that credibility of the Military establishment as a whole will be supported by a free exchange of comment from the soul of its inner workings.
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If it was just the liberals to which we were surrendering ground too, It would not worry me at all. But we are in fact surrendering battle space to the enemy, allowing it free access to the electorate and denying ourselves the same opportunity.
If this trend continues unchallenged, we will lose.
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