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A Coup For Military Blogs

As Phil Carter, a Iraq war veteran, wrote in Slate about the Pentagon's wrongheaded new policy of banning free speech among soldiers:

The war against al-Qaida and Islamic fundamentalism is as much a war of ideas as a war to be fought by our military. Right now, even Donald Rumsfeld agrees that fight is being won by al-Qaida. One cannot run a Google search for Iraq without calling up dozens of jihadi videos and blogs (in Arabic and English) that portray the war from the other side's perspective. By imposing these Draconian regulations on its own troops, the Army has taken its best soldiers out of the fight and ceded this ground to the enemy.

Sure enough, military blogging has already become its own reward: 

An American soldier's graphic account of his deployment in Iraq, detailing the firefights and frustrations of frontline life, has won a prize for books based on blogs, organisers said Monday.

Colby Buzzell's "My War: Killing Time In Iraq", the winner of this year's Lulu Blooker Prize, grew out of an online journal which he started in 2004 while serving as a machine-gunner based in Mosul, northern Iraq.

For the best coverage of this whole affair — where conservative hawks are leading the putsch against the DoD — see Noah Shachtman's Danger Room blog at Wired

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