Top general encourages blogging, despite military policy blocking blogs.
Top general encourages blogging, despite military policy blocking blogs.
Small Wars Journal reports that Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, IV, Commanding General of the Army Combined Arms Center (CAC), “one of the Army’s leading intellectual hubs,” has issued a memorandum directing students and faculty to learn more about blogging:
Command and General Staff College faculty and students will begin blogging as part of their curriculum and writing requirements both within the .mil and public environments. In addition CAC subordinate organizations will begin to engage in the blogosphere in an effort to communicate the myriad of activities that CAC is accomplishing and help assist telling the Army’s story to a wide and diverse audience.
As part of this effort, CAC has even started its own blog. But as Noah Shachtman notes, “It’s a position that appears to run counter to stated Pentagon policy. YouTube is officially banned on military networks. Personal blogs cannot be maintained during duty hours. Many influential blogs are blocked. Stringent regulations, read literally, require commanding officers to review each and every item one of his soldiers puts online.”
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May 19th, 2008 at 7:02 pmWho, exactly, is running things in Bush’s military? General’s saying to blog, but CO’s need to sign off on the soldiers words? If the GENERAL says to blog, you shouldn’t need your CO to ’sanitize’ your thoughts and words. Is there anything the Bush administration cannot screw up?
May 19th, 2008 at 7:03 pmSmall Wars Journal reports…
– - Seriously? Geeze, is that on the newsstand between Sitarmania and Spectacular Baggage Handlersmagazines?
May 19th, 2008 at 7:19 pmWell, to coin a phrase, Military Intellectuals is an oxymoron, accentuate the moron.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:24 pmYup, just below Pet Food Digest.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:25 pmIs this badly needed sunshine in the government or more spying on us all?? Or just training more spies to spy on us and the world?
May 19th, 2008 at 7:46 pmIt so happens I wrote something about “mil-blogging” and its censorship back in 2006 ( and I sure wasn’t the first or only one):
http://at5thestate.blogspot.com/2006/01/entire-us-army-shoots-self-in-foot.html
The officer ranks of the US military are replete with mindless bureaucrats who think “mission statements” are the same as “missions” and mad PowerPoint skillz equals combat experience.
Even those who have seen combat duty in their youth (Colin Powell and General Tommy Franks for instance) have turned into pure polticians–in fact that’s how they got to be generals in the first place.
These types aren;t interested in professional qualified feedback from underlings because problems just make them “look bad”. Instead of managing the real issues, they prefer to manage the perception of the issues.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:55 pmDoes this mean we will be invaded by even more trolls? We have enough problems with them now.
If they are serious about blogging, most students are pretty good at it already. For example, most of us here talked to our friends by phone as we were growing up. Then as we became adults then emails were added to the mix. My daughters generation don’t talk to each other at all. They text message and meet in chat rooms. That generation started out with computers at a very young age, this is pretty much a no-brainer.
But they are not trying to keep us informed; this sounds like as dixie blood puts it “spying” or giving us more propaganda. Either way what an invasion of privacy. Although under the Republican Interpretation of the Constitution, privacy isn’t mentioned. We can only hope the madness will end in January…
May 19th, 2008 at 8:29 pmNo, dammit the general meant to blug, which is general speak for picking ones nose.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:30 pmRUCerious Says
…well picking something anyway.Maybe even scratching his brain. ;)
May 19th, 2008 at 8:58 pmLet’s get this straight. The military is requiring students to “blog” while, arbitrarily, denying access to “activist” blogs? Is that right?
WTF are they going to write about? How they are fighting to protect rights that are denied to them?
May 19th, 2008 at 9:05 pm“…an effort to communicate the myriad of activities that CAC is accomplishing and help assist telling the Army’s story to a wide and diverse audience.”
This is what the erstwhile mili-bloggers will be trained to do… I read nothing here regarding free speech….
May 19th, 2008 at 9:14 pmSo what is the Army’s story? Does it involve showers of candy and flowers,liberater greeters? Maybe a white knight on a stallion?
May 19th, 2008 at 9:19 pmSo, just so I understand this, our troops, who are bravely fighting an endless war to spead some bastardized form of democracy, are themselves denied their First Amendment right to free speech?
Did I get that right? Sorry, Pentagon, these are smart men and women, not mushrooms. You can try to feed them sh*t but you cannot keep them in the dark. I, for one, would like to hear what they have to say.
PEACE
May 19th, 2008 at 9:22 pmHey, I got a good story. It’s all about this guy who could have been a football star, but got shot in the head in Afghanistan. Then he was used as PROPAGANDA. And then the sorry ass presidunce used executive privelege to hide behind like a coward.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:24 pmStratRat Says:
Who, exactly, is running things in Bush’s military?
My thought exactly!
To me it indicates the total chaos that permeates the BushCo administration these days. Too many rats trying to leave the ship and hardly enough ropes to get to them all the shore. Their “brand” is in tatters and is being rejected by voters across the country. It is almost funny to watch, as they create a slogan (in order to jump on the “change” bandwagon Obama created,) that is a close match to the advertising slogan Effexor, the anti depressant, is using.
Poor McBush is crawling around trying to pick up all the spilled marbles rolling everywhere on deck as the rats desert the ship. It is almost karma to watch this flip flopping phony say what ever it takes to try and gain the haloed and now crap encrusted crown of the neocon party that he was denied in 2000.
McCain/Lieberman in 2008! Bring it on!!!
May 19th, 2008 at 9:26 pmMerlin Says:
StratRat Says:
Who, exactly, is running things in Bush’s military?
My thought exactly!
To me it indicates the total chaos that permeates the BushCo administration these days.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:26 pm
That’s what happens to a family when Daddy is a psychotic drunk, “dry” or not, who has suffered a complete mental breakdown. In a real sense there is no head of BushCo because “Georgie doesn’t live here any more”. He’s nothing but an embarrassing marionette who can’t quite seem to execute the simplest commands of his puppeteers.
BTW, that would also explain his giving up golf. Paranoid people tend to avoid uncontrolled situations. And, I don’t see how anyone could convince him that his SS agents can actually control a whole golf course.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:40 pmBlogging is GOOD.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:43 pmpete Says:
In a real sense there is no head of BushCo because “Georgie doesn’t live here any more”. He’s nothing but an embarrassing marionette who can’t quite seem to execute the simplest commands of his puppeteers.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
And does the rest of the world know it! And boy are they becoming more open in showing it! Bush’s latest disastrous trip to the ME is classic. A war mongering speech in Israel knocking arabs and then a humiliating hat in hand trip to his “best buddy” in Saudi Arabia from which he came back empty handed. Meanwhile the Arab press mocked his visit.
Yeah, you keep thinking legacy, Georgie. I hope you live long enough to suffer its judgment.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:04 pmpete Says:
BTW, that would also explain his giving up golf. Paranoid people tend to avoid uncontrolled situations. And, I don’t see how anyone could convince him that his SS agents can actually control a whole golf course.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Actually, pete, they can control the two championship golf courses at Andrews AFB. I know. I was stationed there, and I even got to golf there a few times. (Once we got a tee time because Caspar Weinberger and his party were no-shows, but that’s a different story.) They usually closed off the courses when the president was golfing. Not a lot of fun for the people who had to sit and wait.
The simpler truth is that he was lying about why he doesn’t play golf any more. And that is evident from the many things he didn’t give up – like making a complete fool of himself in public.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:40 pmWayne A. Schneider Says:
May 19th, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I know they can secure a golf course. And you know they can secure a golf course. But, does George know that? He sure seems to get a “hunted and haunted” look when he doesn’t have his back against a solid wall. Then, of course, there’s his pathetic, and often bizarre, attempts at rational speech when he’s in a, relatively, uncontrolled environment. He’s riding a fine line between anxiety and complete paranoia.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 pmpete says
He’s riding a fine line between anxiety and complete paranoia.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Justin Frank, the psychoanalyst, in his book “Bush on the Couch”, concluded that Bush suffers from megalomania. In that state of fantasy, the open state of the golf course would be very scary indeed. Hell, he even had all his campaign speeches in 2004 totally closed to all but the faithful.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:04 pmYes, pete, I believe Bush is very much indeed near complete paranoia. And yet, he says it doesn’t bother him that a majority of the country thinks he’s taking us on the wrong track. He claims that he believes that history will vindicate him. If there is any eventual truth to this, it will not be in the way he is thinking.
He thinks that Democracy (capital “D”) will flourish in the Middle East (which would involve an enormous cultural change the implications for which I doubt they are ready), and that from this, Freedom (capital “F”) will “march” through the land. (The right wing sure loves to militarize every glorious vision of the future, don’t they?) Of course, what he does not explicitly state is that Capitalism will be prevalent and making people like him and his upper-income friends very wealthy.
But I think that history will vindicate him in the sense that this country finally woke its collective sleeping ass up and started paying attention to the kind of megalo-maniacal (Cheney), duplicitous (Rumsfeld), unethical (Rove) and delusional (Bush) people to whom we’ve been handing the keys to our government. Maybe, this will be the point when we all realize that we can, and we MUST, do better than this next time. Because another four years like the eight Bush will have given us could be the last chance we get to change things. Good night and good luck.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:45 pm“Top general encourages blogging, despite military policy blocking blogs.”
And it just keeps getting more Orwellian every day.
Don’t look upon our trolls as trolls. Look upon them as “message force multipliers”.
Yes, our leader is breaking a lot of records. Highest % who think nation is on wrong track, highest % of job disapproval, and longest time below 50% approval (forty months).
Whenever he is not reading from a script, it is hard to tell what he means—you have to get inside the head of a paranoid sociopath.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:56 amKeith Says:
“…you have to get inside the head of a paranoid sociopath.”
May 20th, 2008 at 12:56 am
Thanks anyway, it’s frightening enough living on the same planet.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:14 amSo who’s in charge of approving and rejecting thoughts? “Your thoughts are approved.”
This is just like the GOP, babysit/oppress (repress) and then abandon.
“No blogs during these hours. This one is blocked, too free. No YouTube. Write this in your own words.”
then
“PTSD is under control. Homeless veterans are not that common, it isn’t a problem. The care for our veterans is good. Depleted uranium is not a danger. A new GI bill is excessive.”
May 20th, 2008 at 1:21 amThis is how the Neocon asz-gaskets show thier patriotism and support for the troops:
May 20th, 2008 at 2:03 amhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s2babZk_vQ
So…they were against blogging before they were for it.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:12 amHere’s what blogging is like in the middle east:
May 20th, 2008 at 11:15 am