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Topic: Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news! (Read 1210 times) |
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Hermit
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Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« on: 2007-05-03 07:06:38 » |
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Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
[Hermit: The good news is that the ban on disseminating news or views appears to have justifiably embarrassed the military, as the orders referred to seem to have been classified at a level which prevents the people to whom it apparently applies from being able to access it, never mind read - or "god" forbid - writing about it. See the highlighted area below.]
Source: Wired.com
Authors: Noah Shachtman
Dated: 2007-05-02
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.
Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.
The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.
"This is the final nail in the coffin for combat blogging," said retired paratrooper Matthew Burden, editor of The Blog of War anthology. "No more military bloggers writing about their experiences in the combat zone. This is the best PR the military has -- it's most honest voice out of the war zone. And it's being silenced."
Army Regulation 530--1: Operations Security (OPSEC) (.pdf) restricts more than just blogs, however. Previous editions of the rules asked Army personnel to "consult with their immediate supervisor" before posting a document "that might contain sensitive and/or critical information in a public forum." The new version, in contrast, requires "an OPSEC review prior to publishing" anything -- from "web log (blog) postings" to comments on internet message boards, from resumes to letters home.
Failure to do so, the document adds, could result in a court-martial, or "administrative, disciplinary, contractual, or criminal action."
Despite the absolutist language, the guidelines' author, Major Ray Ceralde, said there is some leeway in enforcement of the rules. "It is not practical to check all communication, especially private communication," he noted in an e-mail. "Some units may require that soldiers register their blog with the unit for identification purposes with occasional spot checks after an initial review. Other units may require a review before every posting."
But with the regulations drawn so tightly, "many commanders will feel like they have no choice but to forbid their soldiers from blogging -- or even using e-mail," said Jeff Nuding, who won the bronze star for his service in Iraq. "If I'm a commander, and think that any slip-up gets me screwed, I'm making it easy: No blogs," added Nuding, writer of the "pro-victory" Dadmanly site. "I think this means the end of my blogging." [Hermit: "Pro-victory" apparently asserts that it is America's "God given" right to kill as many Iraqi as it takes to determine their future, and American casualties and costs in this holy campaign are irrelevant. "God" will bless us every time we kill another Iraqi.]
Active-duty troops aren't the only ones affected by the new guidelines. Civilians working for the military, Army contractors -- even soldiers' families -- are all subject to the directive as well.
But, while the regulations may apply to a broad swath of people, not everybody affected can actually read them. In a Kafka-esque turn, the guidelines are kept on the military's restricted Army Knowledge Online intranet. Many Army contractors -- and many family members -- don't have access to the site. Even those able to get in are finding their access is blocked to that particular file.
"Even though it is supposedly rewritten to include rules for contractors (i.e., me) I am not allowed to download it," e-mails Perry Jeffries, an Iraq war veteran now working as a contractor to the Armed Services Blood Program.
The U.S. military -- all militaries -- have long been concerned about their personnel inadvertently letting sensitive information out. Troops' mail was read and censored throughout World War II; back home, government posters warned citizens "careless talk kills."
Military blogs, or milblogs, as they're known in service-member circles, only make the potential for mischief worse. On a website, anyone, including foreign intelligence agents, can stop by and look for information.
"All that stuff we used to get around a bar and say to each other -- well, now because we're publishing it in open forums, now it's intel," said milblogger and retired Army officer John Donovan.
Passing on classified data -- real secrets -- is already a serious military crime. The new regulations (and their author) take an unusually expansive view of what kind of unclassified information a foe might find useful. In an article published by the official Army News Service, Maj. Ceralde "described how the Pentagon parking lot had more parked cars than usual on the evening of Jan. 16, 1991, and how pizza parlors noticed a significant increase of pizza to the Pentagon.... These observations are indicators, unclassified information available to all … that Operation Desert Storm (was about to) beg(i)n."
Steven Aftergood, head of the Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, called Ceralde's example "outrageous."
"It's true that from an OPSEC (operational security) perspective, almost anything -- pizza orders, office lights lit at odd hours, full or empty parking lots -- can potentially tip off an observer that something unusual is afoot," he added. "But real OPSEC is highly discriminating. It does not mean cutting off the flow of information across the board. If on one day in 1991 an unusual number of pizza orders coincided with the start of Desert Storm, it doesn't mean that information about pizza orders should now be restricted. That's not OPSEC, that's just stupidity."
During the early days of the Iraq war, milblogs flew under the radar of the Defense Department's information security establishment. But after soldiers like Specialist Colby Buzzell began offering detailed descriptions of firefights that were scantily covered in the press, blogs began to be viewed by some in the military as a threat -- an almost endless chorus of unregulated voices that could say just about anything.
Buzzell, for one, was banned from patrols and confined to base after such an incident. Military officials asked other bloggers to make changes to their sites. One soldier took down pictures of how well armor stood up to improvised bombs; a military spouse erased personal information from her site -- including "dates of deployment, photos of the family, the date their next child is expected, the date of the baby shower and where the family lives," said Army spokesman Gordon Van Fleet.
But such cases have been rare, Major Elizabeth Robbins noted in a paper (.pdf) for the Army's Combined Arms Center.
"The potential for an OPSEC violation has thus far outstripped the reality experienced by commanders in the field," she wrote.
And in some military circles, bloggers have gained forceful advocates. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, for example, now regularly arranges exclusive phone conferences between bloggers and senior commanders in Afghanistan and Iraq. Major Robbins, for one, has argued strongly for easing the restrictions on the soldier-journalists.
"The reputation of the Army is maintained on many fronts, and no one fights harder on its behalf than our young soldiers. We must allow them access to the fight," Robbins wrote. "To silence the most credible voices -- those at the spear's edge -- and to disallow them this function is to handicap ourselves on a vital, very real battlefield."
Nevertheless, commanders have become increasingly worried about the potential for leaks. In April 2005, military leaders in Iraq told milbloggers to "register" (.pdf) their sites with superior officers. In September, the Army made the first revision of its OPSEC regulations since the mid-'90s, ordering GIs to talk to their commanders before posting potentially-problematic information. Soldiers began to drop their websites, in response.
More bloggers followed suit, when an alert came down from highest levels of the Pentagon that "effective immediately, no information may be placed on websites … unless it has been reviewed for security concerns," and the Army announced it was activating a team, the Army Web Risk Assessment Cell, to scan blogs for information breaches. An official Army dispatch told milbloggers, "Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be." That unit continues to look for security violations, new regulations in hand.
See the Wired blog Danger Room for additional information on the Army's blogger ban.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #1 on: 2007-05-03 19:28:54 » |
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[Blunderov] Matters must surely be critical when it becomes official policy to shoot the messenger. True, "defeatism" has often been savagely discouraged in time of war. But what if the defeat is a fait accompli? If the Boy General had his 'druthers noboby would speak of the further lives he is resolutely determined to to sacrifice in the cause of his demented vanity.
globalresearch
Soldiers admit: 'Iraq war is lost'
by Simon Assaf
Global Research, May 3, 2007
Socialist Worker
The war is lost. That's the message coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan by those sent to fight it.
From ordinary soldiers to frontline military commanders the message is bleak for those who dragged us into the "long war".
Lieutenant Colonel Paul Yingling is a senior commander in the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment and has served in two tours of Iraq. He wrote in the May issue of the US Armed Forces Journal:
"For the second time in a generation, the US faces the prospect of defeat at the hands of an insurgency. In April 1975, the US fled the Republic of Vietnam, abandoning our allies to their fate at the hands of North Vietnamese Communists.
"In 2007, Iraq's grave and deteriorating condition offers diminishing hope for an American victory and portends risk of an even wider and more destructive regional war."
The reason for the looming defeat, he wrote, is that the military downplayed the growing resistance to the occupation:
"For reasons that are not yet clear, America's general officer corps underestimated the strength of the enemy, overestimated the capabilities of Iraq's government and security forces, and failed to provide the US Congress with an accurate assessment of security conditions in Iraq."
He said that most senior officers agreed with his analysis.
Yingling's article has sent shock waves through George Bush's administration, which has placed all its hopes for victory on a "surge" of 30,000 US troops.
The mood of despair among those sent to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq was highlighted by a candid interview with a British soldier who just has returned from Basra in southern Iraq.
Intolerable
Paul Barton, a private in the Staffordshire Regiment, told his local paper that far from British troops handing over security to Iraqi soldiers, the British were being driven out of Iraq by an increasingly sophisticated resistance movement.
He said, "The situation has become intolerable. We are meant to be there peacekeeping but there is no peace to keep. There's a civil war going on and we are caught in the middle, and are coming under attack day and night.
"Insurgents are getting access to a lot more weapons, and are becoming stronger and stronger.
"As far as I'm concerned, we're coming into the end game. We're losing around four soldiers a month and it won't get any better."
The retreat from Basra began last year when the British fled their consular building in the city. They then abandoned a military base on the edge of the city and are now holed up at the airport, miles from population centres.
According to Barton, even this has become unsafe:
"They've even started attacking our base at Basra airport, now they've got proper artillery guns. Once that's gone there's nowhere left.
"We're just sitting ducks under constant attack – three or four times a day. Fifteen mortars and three rockets were fired at us in the first hour we were there. It was unbelievable.
"From the end of January to March, there was a siege mentality. We were getting mortared every hour of the day. We didn't sleep for months.
"Every patrol we went on we were either shot at or blown up by roadside bombs. It was crazy. Once, when our tents were attacked, I got out but my mate was hit. He was in bed and had the top of his head blown off. Luckily he survived, but he's got brain damage."
Resistance
The picture emerging from Afghanistan echoes the sense of failure. The Taliban are now moving into areas that were once considered secure.
Last week insurgents launched attacks in a district that is only 45 miles from the capital, Kabul. They have appeared in areas dominated by ethnic groups that have been hostile to the Taliban in the past.
The resistance has also spread from their heartlands in the south to the west of the country. Demonstrations against bloody military raids and air strikes are also becoming more common.
Over 1,000 Afghans sacked and burned government buildings in a western province on Monday of last week, demanding that occupation troops halt all military operations in the area.
Protesters say that Nato troops are regularly targeting civilians and then claiming they are killing Taliban fighters.
As Nato pours more troops into a bloody "spring offensive", some Western and Afghan officials have admitted that the US-backed government has little support among ordinary people and the occupation faces defeat.
Global Research Articles by Simon Assaf
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Hermit
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #2 on: 2007-05-05 13:27:16 » |
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Much more on this story, including the "recognition" by the US Military that "The Media" is a threat, that the military bloggers are just seeking therapy and that the Blog-bust was instigated by an Urban Legend.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #3 on: 2007-05-14 17:39:43 » |
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[Blunderov]It strikes me that there is something fishy about all this. (By all this I mean the clamping down on military blogs.) I suppose I should have realised that there were disinformation operations going on when I saw the bit about how many pizzas were delivered to the Pentagon and what inferences might, or might not, be derived therefrom.
I wonder if the army does not have itself a morale problem that it wishes to contain?
We know that recruitment has dried to a trickle. And very curious is the paucity of results obtained when googling "morale" and "news". Zilch. Which is not what one would expect given the circumstances to say the least! One gets a definite sense of deathly hush. Hmm.
http://www.slugsite.com/archives/406
Blocking Websites
14 May 2007, 18:49:30 | Nemo
Today’s announcement by the military that they’re blocking a dozen popular websites from Department of Defense computer networks says the actions were done not for productivity reasons, or with network security in mind, but to conserve bandwidth.
I have to wonder just how honest they’re really being.
If you believe the military, they have no problems per se with the websites they’re blocking; indeed, their spokesperson, Julie Ziegenhorn, goes out of her way to point out that they’re not passing judgment on any of the sites in question. Rather, they say, the problem is that the multimedia being viewed on these sites - streaming video and audio - are consuming too much bandwidth.
Here’s the thing, though - there are other, far technologically better, ways to solve that problem than blocking a mere dozen domains. QOS and TOS provide a good starting point. Even more effective is blocking port 80 traffic that’s not of a handful of more benign MIME types.
The problem is, the military is being schizophrenic and taking half-measures to address what they perceive as a problem. Rather than blocking the culprit - streaming media - they’re blocking a dozen domains, leaving personnel free to stream audio from, for example, the BBC, or even Cambridge University Radio. There’s nothing stopping them from from streaming video off, say, Fox News’ website, or even Google Video. And if they do want to view a blocked site on a government computer, it looks like there is nothing to stop them using a web proxy (like this one) other than a well-developed sense of right and wrong.
If the ban is really about bandwidth usage, blocking multimedia MIME types at the network level, or rate-limiting multimedia traffic to a painfully low level, are better options than arbitrarily denying access to a small number of popular sites. If it’s about something else - productivity issues, for example - the Department of Defense had ought to be honest enough to admit it.
It’s not that blocking access to MySpace, YouTube, and so on is a bad idea - far from it. It isn’t that the announced reason for the block is that prepopsterous, either. Rather, it’s that not only is the “solution” not a great way to address the problem, but short-sighted and doomed to quite imminent failure. It’s the medium they need to be addressing, not the messengers.
Today, YouTube, MySpace, and PhotoBucket. Tomorrow, because this “fix” only addresses the symptoms, not the problem, it’ll probably be Flickr, PBase, and Google. Next week, RapidShare, MegaUpload, and perhaps Blogspot. Next month? Who knows…
palmbeachpost
An enemy that follows the troops home
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
By Dan Moffett
Palm Beach Post Editorial Writer
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The constant stress of prolonged deployments and life in the cross hairs of a barbaric Iraq civil war is taking a psychological toll on U.S. troops that could be worse than Vietnam.
Unlike the war of 40 years ago, many soldiers in Iraq have no idea when their service will end. With the drafted Army during Vietnam, at least soldiers knew with some degree of reliability when they were getting out. To maintain troop levels in Iraq, the Pentagon has recalled units for third and fourth tours of duty and shortened time off between deployments, making war a way of life for military families - with no end in sight.
Army National Guard and Reserve personnel who thought they were citizen soldiers have found themselves without civilian careers and living in constant peril. President Bush's surge and new U.S. strategy have increased the stress by stationing troops in volatile neighborhoods away from relatively safe bases.
The threat is round-the-clock and omnipresent. U.S. Rep. Tim Mahoney, D-Palm Beach Gardens, says he was surprised to find out that U.S. units stationed with Iraqi troops often disarm them each night because the Americans fear their comrades can't be trusted.
Suicide bombers and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in urban areas keep tensions high. U.S. soldiers have great difficulty identifying the enemy and knowing from where the next threat will come.
Iraq is a breeding ground for psychological damage, and the extent of that damage is alarming and poorly understood.
A Pentagon survey has found that suicide rates among Iraq troops and veterans is about 40 percent higher than the average Army rate: 16.1 suicides per 100,000, compared with 11.6 per 100,000.
The medical survey also found that about 10 percent of soldiers and Marines reported mistreating Iraqi civilians - hitting or kicking noncombatants and destroying property. Another military survey found that more than 40 percent of U.S. soldiers supported using torture to save a comrade's life and would not report a member of their unit for killing or wounding civilians.
Gen. David Petraeus felt compelled to respond to those findings by writing a letter to service members reminding them that adhering to high moral values "distinguishes us from our enemy." It was a letter he wouldn't have had to write several years ago.
Army medical researchers found that reports of marital problems have risen, and troops on multiple tours of duty had higher divorce rates.
Overall, the survey found that Army soldiers had higher rates of mental-health problems than Marines, probably because Marines have shorter deployments and more time at home between them to "reset mentally" before returning to combat. Army morale was found to be lower than Marine morale.
The Army conducted the survey of about 1,800 troops between August and October, before casualty increases from the surge and before another round of redeployments. It's fair to assume the numbers would look considerably worse today.
The Pentagon has responded by providing more "battlemind training" before and after deployment. The idea is to help soldiers identify the symptoms of mental illness and encourage them to seek help. The Army's medical health Web site now has links to a half-dozen suicide prevention hot lines, a reflection of Iraq's growing psychological toll.
Back home, the safety nets for veterans are torn or nonexistent. The Veterans Affairs Department's inspector general has released a disturbing report that Iraq and Afghanistan vets are at an increased risk of suicide because VA health clinics do not provide 24-hour mental-health care.
The inspector general said about 1,000 veterans who receive VA care are committing suicide each year. Yet, the VA denies inpatient care for post-traumatic stress disorder to combat veterans who do not present obvious symptoms. About one-third of returning vets have PTSD or other mental illness.
As with Vietnam, American families will deal with the insidious legacy of Iraq and Afghanistan for decades to come.
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Blunderov
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #4 on: 2007-05-17 10:17:07 » |
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[Blunderov] Seems my inference that there is a morale problem in the US armed forces may be correct. Not that this is any big surprise.
Source : Bellaciao
Rebellion By US Forces In Iraq Prompts ‘Rapid' Pentagon Crackdown
17 May 2007, 13:39:12
May 17, 2007
By: Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
Reports from Russian Military Analysts are describing what they term as a ‘rapidly declining will-to-fight” among American Soldiers fighting in Iraq, with the greatest concern being placed upon US Soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division who reportedly this past week refused orders to ‘take to field' against their Iraqi insurgent enemies.
According to these reports, the unprecedented rebellion against their Commanders by these US Soldiers was prompted by an Iraqi insurgent attack upon their fellow Soldiers wherein 4 of their comrades were killed and 3 captured by the enemy forces, and which many of these Soldiers believed could have been prevented if they had had more support.
Echoing the mounting concerns of these US Soldiers was one of their Commanders, General Benjamin R. Mixon, who this past week urged Americas War Leaders to send more troops to Iraq to battle the mounting opposition to the US occupation of that Middle Eastern Nation.
The concerns of the US Soldiers in Iraq, that they do not have the resources they need to fight their enemy, were further stated by Russian photojournalist Dmitry Chebotayev prior to his being killed while on patrol with US Forces Iraq, and which he further documented the growing disillusionment with the war by ordinary American Soldiers.
Adding to the growing rebellion by these US Soldiers against their War Leaders was the Pentagons recent orders extending the tours of their forces in their war zones, and which, according to the Time Magazine News Service, is destroying the lives of these Soldiers, and those of their families, and as we can read:
"[T]he Pentagon announced, on April 11, that the standard Army deployment in Afghanistan and Iraq would now be 15 months rather than the previous 12-month stint.
Soldiers deploying abroad have always had to contend with missing a child's birth, a sibling's wedding or a parent's death. They face fatigue and frustration no matter the duration of stay.
Their spouses suffer at home, and marriages fall apart under the strain of separation. And the stress of deployment in a hostile combat zone has a corrosive effect on discipline. Three more months may not seem that long to a civilian, but to a soldier already on the ground, it's another 90 days in which a lot could go wrong.
"It's like running a race," says Chaplain Doug Weaver, of the 3-71. "The longer it is, the more people fall out."
Though unprecedented in the United States current war against the Muslim peoples, American Soldiers, and when faced with fighting a losing war, have previously resorted to refusing the orders of their Commanders, and as we can read as exampled from the US Soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War:
"Where soldiers refused to obey orders this became known as a "combat refusal". In a report for Pacifica Radio, journalist Richard Boyle went to the base to interview a dozen "grunts" from the First Cavalry Division. The GI's had been ordered on a nighttime combat mission the previous night. Six of the men had refused to go and several others had objected to the order.
"They'll have to court-martial the whole company," one soldier told Boyle. "I say right away they can start typing up my court-martial."
The GI's told Boyle they objected not only to what they saw as a suicidal mission but to the war effort itself. Their commanding officer wouldn't let them wear t-shirts with peace symbols, they complained. "He calls us hypocrites if we wear a peace sign," one GI said. "[As if] we wanted to come over here and fight. Like we can't believe in peace, man, because we're carrying [an M-16] out there."
Unlike their counterparts in the Vietnam War, however, present day US Soldiers had begun to communicate their rebellious feelings against their War Leaders through the use of the Internet, to include posting thousands of videos and blogs which ran counter to the ‘positive' message of the war being given by the United States media organs.
This will no longer be the case as the Pentagon, in a ‘rapid' response to the growing rebellion of its Soldiers fighting the United States wars, has immediately denied Internet access for all its fighting forces in an attempt to bring them back under ‘control'.
Not content with just censoring their Soldiers ability to communicate with the World, and each other, outside of their War Zones, the Pentagon has taken the further step of ordering the Iraqi government to not allow any filming of the massive bombings taking place in that country on an, almost, hourly basis, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:
"Police prevented press photographers and camera operators from filming the scene of a bombing yesterday under a new policy limiting coverage of the devastating explosions that have become a hallmark of the violence in the country.
To enforce an order that a group of Iraqi journalists leave Tayaran Square, where the bombing occurred, police fired several shots in the air, reporters said.
Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim Khalaf, the operations director at the Interior Ministry, said this weekend that Iraq's government has decided to bar press photographers and cameramen from the scene of bombings."
The actions of the United States War Leaders in suppressing the growing rebellion of their Soldiers to their wars, along with the American publics growing concern for their husbands, wives, sons and daughters fighting and dying daily, is eerily reminiscent of the Soviets war in Afghanistan in the way it is being ‘managed' by the American government.
But, like the Soviet war in Afghanistan clearly showed, when a country loses 15,000 of its children to death in war, along with over 500,000 wounded, even the most tightly controlled media propaganda effort fails to contain the growing outrage of a Nation burying its war dead on a daily basis.
Even more instructive, perhaps, for the American people themselves in looking at the Soviet-Afghanistan war was its aftermath which toppled the former Soviet Empire from its Super-Power state to that of a Nation more resembling a Third-World Nation, of which only now the Russian people are emerging from.
Sadly, there is no evidence that the American people have learned these hard lessons, even more sadly, their cost for failing to heed the warnings of history, including their own, could very well see them sharing the same fate as the once mighty Soviet Empire….a Nation that when all is said and done will simply, and quickly, cease to exist.
http://www.whatdoesitmean.com/index1010.htm
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Blunderov
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #5 on: 2007-05-21 06:41:04 » |
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[Blunderov] Whether this picture is genuine or not I cannot say.
http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=14894
Why the Pentagon censors Soldiers’ access to the Internet
by St. Clair
The situation BOTH in Iraq and in Afghanistan is a lot more involved than mainstream media can fathom. And, if it could fathom what is going on, it would not be allowed to report it for obvious reasons, as this would further undermine the morale of the Western world. Troops and their families at home used to be able to at least write emails to each other via blog spots and troops were also allowed to access certain parts of the internet. This is now no longer possible.
The truth here is multi-layered: Several troop elements (including higher ranking officers) have started to REFUSE to carry out certain missions because simply these missions are so dangerous that the loss of more troops would be the consequence. There are not enough protective elements to back up guards on forelorn outposts and there are in general not enough troops to hold down the territories of Iraq and of Afghanistan. This assessment was clear to this author going in during 2003.
Sources of this author who are on the ground in the Middle East, either embedded with media or with troops, or with state department security forces as private contractors, have seen that even holding order in the streets of Baghdad or Kabul is not possible, let alone holding the ambitious land grab that ranges in essence from Afghan mountain passes over Iran to Basra and the Kurds territories. it is strategically NOT doable, and this has also been pointed out by a plethora of highest ranking general officers. The Pentagon seems not to hear what the intelligence on the ground is saying, or, it seems not to care what is happening to the troops which are extended beyond their capacities.
People who were promised to return home after 12 months were told at the last moment that their tours were to be extended by up to 3-4 months, which for both officers and soldiers can take a huge physical and mental toll. This results then in fatigued and frustrated troops who see that what they are doing is pointless at best, or dangerous at worst. Levels of concentration are no longer there when sleep is deprived, logistics do not work, and command unity is not established.
Troops have begun to complain to their families and started to tell their loved ones while at home what is really going on. "MySpace.com" and many other hubs of the world wide web were used by families who created networks of their own, and they write about what their loved ones staying in the occupied lands tell them.
Independent observers at UN and in diplomatic circles confirm this: The situation in Iraq and Afghanistan is slowly but surely falling apart for the troop elements as well as for the occupied countries. History would show that after a while the occupied territories of the Roman empire knew how to answer to the occupation. They just WAITED. At times they waited hundreds of years. In this day and age and in the face of a militia type defense that is day by day learning how to defend its lands in a bigger and better organization the "waiting" can be as short as ten years. So far we are in to this situation since 2003, or a bit over four years.
It is very easy to predict the trend. The troops of the occupying forces are getting more and more tired, more and more frustrated, and more and more disillusioned with the mission itself, let alone with the day to day threats they face. Officers in the ranks of lieutenants to colonels, and their soldiers, see the reality both in Kabul and in Baghdad, and in Basra, and in the mountains and the deserts, and they figure out that in the long run it might not even be possible to defend the "green zone", let alone the connection routes of say Basra (oil terminals) and Baghdad.
These issues have been OPENLY discussed on the internet and in the homes of the troops families. The main stream media has so far been able to manage to hide all this or to make it look "manageable" or acceptable. This is why the Pentagon has to restrict the access of its troops to the internet. The troops are the best carriers of true intelligence, together with independent observers who have seen the corruption in both Kabul and Baghdad, and who have seen the infrastructure of the countries deteriorate over the years.
The job at hand is impossible for the troops. That is the fact we all see emerging and that is what the Pentagon is facing. The prognostic of this author is that the situation will deteriorate further until about 2009 when troop elements will begin to desert their missions. The fact that certain troops have refused to carry out certain tactical missions and that their own security had to be farmed out to private contractors is an indication the troops are actually very badly trained and poorly equipped.
Many retired Marines have offered their private help to the state department to help out on the ground. From what this author hears, these retired and superbly experienced Marines are appalled to see in what situations their military friends have to carry on this impossible mission to hold together countries which sooner or later will again go back to doing things their way, the Levantine and Byzantine way of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, the last essential non-NWO-aligned nation — Iran — negotiates itself into a super power position via very cleverly structured alliances ranging from South America all the way to China and Russia. People at the state department in Washington DC have also resigned after seeing who is actually in charge in London, and they admit that this thing has gone very bad for the USA and the UK and it will, if it continues in this manner, which it will, go even worse.
One of the only reasons we have not seen really huge death tolls on the troops is because the medics and medical system is now so good that wounds which would have killed a soldier 20-30 years ago can be handled in such a manner that the casualty goes later in to the category of very severely "wounded". If you take a look at Walter Reid hospital and at the stations in Germany, where the soldiers are flown in, you understand what severely wounded means. It means disabled for life.
The price the nation will pay for all this in the long run, in terms of post traumatic psychological counseling and victims assistance is beyond the scope of what the occupier nations can handle. The question is why is the Pentagon not seeing what many others on the ground have seen? Why does the Pentagon think that censoring troops and their families at home will have an impact? It will create the exact OPPOSITE effect to what pentagon intends, which is damage control. It will veer out of control once the families begin to use other means to be heard.
Think "Ron Paul" effect.
By the way, there are many more soldiers missing than just the "THREE" of which CNN and mass media talks about. Sources think we are looking at about 50 unaccounted disappearances. Is it possible that certain elements have deserted, or switched side, or simply gone fishing?
Peace
St.Clair with new blog and video at http://fore11seen.blogspot.com
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Hermit
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Re:Uncomfortable about too many bad things happening in Iraq? Censor the news!
« Reply #6 on: 2007-05-21 14:53:30 » |
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We will also rely more and more in Iraq, as we already do in Afghaniostan, for retribution from the air after tip-off, given that we can't put boots on the ground and wouldn't understand what was going on if we could, The consequential soaring civilian death rates will again be invisible to the sponsors of genocide; as all the dead, male and female, from infants to octogenerians will be conveniently labeled as terrorists - or insurgents. The dead, after all, cannot argue. Unfortunately the people dtying are in large part much too brown to draw attention nevermind sympathy from the American power elite or the media sources they run.
The reality is that in both places, we have entered very late in a centuries old intertribal warfare without end, without knowing which side we are on, without knowing what we want to achieve, without any valid justification and without any clue of extraction; on the behest of a leadership without reason, although, at least in Cheney's case, an "Israel first" policy that ought to make him eligable as their patron saint.
Even though the CICs revolted against the attack on Iran earlier this year, all of those involved are being replaced with more compliant souls. And America is increasingly receiving long deserved recognition as a failed regime run by war criminals sponsoring widescale murder.
President George W. Bush's administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.
“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Mr. Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. “The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.”
Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter (He later explained that he didn't mean globally, but in the context of other US Administrations. The Iraqis might disagree).
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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