Milblogs, Soldier e-mails now verboten

I wish this were but a bad dream but alas it seems to be a bad reality.The best PR the military has coming from the war front is the milbloggers. It damned sure is not from the media, which is anathema to anything but US deaths. No successes are allowed to be reported according to what we see on a daily basis from the handlers/editors of our own media outlets. And now this, reported at Wired by Noah Shachtman.

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."

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."

Please, please read the whole thing and let your voices be heard.

Ambassador Pelosi

The Daily Colonial paper of George Washington University has a scathing editorial by Nick Miller on what Pelosi has accomplished in a mere four months as Speaker of the House.

Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House for less than four months, yet in that short time she has already managed to prove herself incapable of responsible leadership. Embracing her new position of power, Pelosi seems determined to meddle in areas where she is least needed, most notably in the realm of diplomacy and foreign policy.

Coming on the heels of her possibly felonious diplomatic excursion to Syria last month, Pelosi is apparently continuing to pursue her misguided and backwards attempts at diplomacy. According to a report from The American Spectator last week, Pelosi has refused to meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe (an American ally), but is planning a visit to Venezuela to meet with Hugo Chavez — one of the world’s most outspoken enemies of the United States.

In other words, in continued disregard for the Constitution of the United States, Pelosi has taken it upon herself to ignore U.S. diplomatic policies and attempt to engage in her own personal diplomacy with America’s enemies.

Article II of the U.S. Constitution explicitly states that that President is the one who “shall receive ambassadors and other public ministers” and that the President “shall have the power, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties.”

In addition, the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that the President and his authorized agents have the sole authority to negotiate with foreign governments, and the Logan Act specifically forbids unauthorized Americans from negotiating with foreign governments with the intent to impact relations between that government and the U.S.

Unfortunately, it appears that the Constitution and U.S. laws are of little significance for Pelosi, who would rather win cheap political points with moveon.org than obey those pesky things known as “laws.”..

.

At a stage in American history where foreign policy issues reign supreme, it is even more important than usual that the United States present a united diplomatic front. Legal issues notwithstanding, it is both sad and disturbing that Nancy Pelosi is using her position as Speaker to undermine American foreign policy for her own political purposes. Not only is she potentially hindering American diplomatic efforts, but she is also proving herself unfit for the job of Speaker.

Get this: Nancy Pelosi won’t meet with Presdient Uribe of Columbia, perhaps the most pro-US leader in South America, despite his going out of his way to make the meeting happen.

According to sources within the House Democratic leadership, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has denied the request for a meeting with Uribe when he comes to Washington next week. Uribe’s staff has attempted to set up a meeting with Pelosi, offering to come to her offices with Uribe if necessary. Pelosi has refused the meeting.

“She has third parties who have encouraged her not to take the meeting,” says a leadership aide, who said a coalition of labor organizations and MoveOn.org had been pressuring her to not meet with Uribe. “We’ve never seen anything like it. It’s not like we’re talking about some family from San Francisco who stopped by her office unannounced. This is the president of a country.”

In Colombia, Uribe has been struggling against communist terrorist groups financed by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, as well as leftist political pressure internally. All while attempting to work with the U.S. against narco-trafficking. “He’s a friend and an ally,” says a State Department source, who was unaware of Pelosi’s snub. “I’d be surprised that one of our national leaders would not meet with a strategic partner of the United States of America.”

But guess who Nancy will meet with? Uribe’s socialist, anti-America, anti-free trade, anti-human-rights enemy Hugo Chavez.

According to leadership staff, [Pelosi] has members of her personal staff working on initial plans for a trip to Venezuela, perhaps in the fall, to meet with Chavez.

So let’s review:

Pelosi won’t meet with General Petraeus, the commander of the most important conflict in the middle east. But she will meet with Syrian dictator Bassar Assad, one of the biggest sponsors of terrorism in the middle east.

Pelosi snubs one of our most important allies in South America, but will make time for our biggest enemy in South America in the person of Hugo Chavez.

Anyone else seeing a pattern here?
UPDATE: The beat goes on.

An Iraqi asks " Why Are the Democrats Doing This?"

Omar Fadhil, who writes a blog "Iraq the Model", asks that question.

Instead of trying to come up with ideas to help they try to halt the sincere effort to stabilize Iraq and rescue the Middle East from a catastrophe.

I am Iraqi and to me the possible consequences of this vote are terrifying. Just as we began to see signs of progress in my country the Democrats come and say ‘well, it’s not worth it, so it’s time to leave’.
Evidently to them my life and the lives of twenty five million Iraqis are not worth trying for and they shouldn’t expect us to be grateful for this.

For four years everybody made mistakes; the administration made mistakes and admitted them and my people and leaders made mistakes as well and we regret them.
But now we have a fresh start; a new strategy with new ideas and tactics reached after studying previous mistakes and designed to reverse the setbacks we witnessed in the course of this war.

This strategy although its tools are not fully deployed yet is showing promising signs of progress.
General Petraeus said yesterday that things will get tougher before they get easier in Iraq and this is the kind of fact-based realistic assessment of the situation which politicians should listen to when they discuss the war thousands of miles away.
We must give this effort the chance it deserves and provide all the support and constructive critique, not the ‘war is lost’ empty rhetoric...

Continue reading here.

George Tenet moves From CIA to CYA...Cont.

This will, I am sure be a developing story as more tidbits from his book comes out and interviews. He has already been caught is more than one fabrication in his new role. Not the first but I'm sure not the last to fisk Mr. Tenet and his tome, Christopher Hitchens unloads both barrels. Priceless.His conclusion is also priceless.

A highly irritating expression in Washington has it that "hindsight is always 20-20." Would that it were so. History is not a matter of hindsight and is not, in fact, always written by the victors. In this case, a bogus history is being offered by a real loser whose hindsight is cockeyed and who had no foresight at all.

And we also have Tenets imaginary meeting with Richard Perle at the White House on the morning of 9/12/2001.

On the day after 9/11, he [Tenet] adds, he ran into Richard Perle, a leading neoconservative and the head of the Defense Policy Board, coming out of the White House. He says Mr. Perle turned to him and said: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday. They bear responsibility."

Here's the problem: Richard Perle was in France on that day, unable to fly back after September 11. In fact Perle did not return to the United State until September 15. Did Tenet perhaps merely get the date of this encounter wrong? Well, the quote Tenet ascribes to Perle hinges on the encounter taking place September 12: "Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday." And Perle in any case categorically denies to THE WEEKLY STANDARD ever having said any such thing to Tenet, while coming out of the White House or anywhere else.

It gets better.

SCOTT SHANE REPORTED in Saturday's New York Times that former CIA chief George Tenet's dramatic description in his book, At the Center of the Storm, of an August 2002 presentation at the CIA by defense undersecretary Douglas Feith and his staff, is at the very least misleading. In order to suggest that Feith's staff was utterly out of its depth, Tenet characterized the main briefer, Tina Shelton, as a "naval reservist." In fact, she had been a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst for almost two decades. Tenet also claimed that Shelton said in her presentation of Iraq-al Qaeda contacts, "It is an open-and-shut case." Shelton and Feith both deny she said that. One person who served in government with Shelton told THE WEEKLY STANDARD today he finds it "inconceivable" that Shelton, an experienced analyst, would have made such an unequivocal assertion.

Stay tuned, this book my be a blockbuster for the publisher but it may prove to be a ball buster for Mr. Tenet. Look for updates.
Update:Today's responses to George Tenet's new book include Rick Richman's "What Tenet knew, when he knew it and whom he told," Tom Joscelyn's "More than enough evidence," Rich Lowry's "George Tenet's slam-dunk," and NR's editorial "Imperfect Storm."

Of course Michael Scheuer, the head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, worked with Tenet and takes issue with much of what is more and more looking like revisionist history from Tenet in the Washington Post.

Like self-serving earlier leaks seemingly from Tenet's circle to such reporters as Ron Suskind and Bob Woodward, "At the Center of the Storm" is similarly disingenuous about Tenet's record on al-Qaeda. In "State of Denial," Woodward paints a heroic portrait of the CIA chief warning national security adviser Condoleezza Rice of pending al-Qaeda strikes during the summer of 2001, only to have his warnings ignored. Tenet was indeed worried during the so-called summer of threat, but one wonders why he did not summon the political courage earlier to accuse Rice of negligence, most notably during his testimony under oath before the 9/11 commission...

..."I was talking to the national security adviser and the president and the vice president every day," Tenet told the commission during a nationally televised hearing on March 24, 2004. "I certainly didn't get a sense that anybody was not paying attention to what I was doing and what I was briefing and what my concerns were and what we were trying to do." Now a "frustrated" Tenet writes that he held an urgent meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, to try to get "the full attention of the administration" and "finally get us on track." He can't have it both ways.

But what troubles me most is Tenet's handling of the opportunities that CIA officers gave the Clinton administration to capture or kill bin Laden between May 1998 and May 1999. Each time we had intelligence about bin Laden's whereabouts, Tenet was briefed by senior CIA officers at Langley and by operatives in the field. He would nod and assure his anxious subordinates that he would stress to Clinton and his national security team that the chances of capturing bin Laden were solid and that the intelligence was not going to get better. Later, he would insist that he had kept up his end of the bargain, but that the NSC had decided not to strike.

Since 2001, however, several key Clinton counterterrorism insiders (including NSC staffers Richard A. Clarke, Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon) have reported that Tenet consistently denigrated the targeting data on bin Laden, causing the president and his team to lose confidence in the hard-won intelligence. "We could never get over the critical hurdle of being able to corroborate Bin Ladin's whereabouts," Tenet now writes. That of course is untrue, but it spared him from ever having to explain the awkward fallout if an attempt to get bin Laden failed.

As I am wont to say, read it all as well as the links to other views. I am reminded of a quote by Patrick Moynihan "Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts"

Build May Day demonstrations

NOTICE...This is not from the Onion and is not satire. It should be. This is in regard to the upcoming May Day "Celebrations". and is an indication of what some of the goals are.

The May Day rallies across the United States—from Los Angeles to Chicago and Miami—are an opportunity to join forces with others to demand: Unconditional, immediate permanent residency for all undocumented immigrants! Legalization now!

Such actions are an important part of responding to the U.S. rulers’ stepped-up war on working people. In recent months hardly a week has gone by without raids by immigration cops, who have rounded up workers by the dozens, and sometimes by the hundreds, in workplaces and neighborhoods.

Last year’s unprecedented street mobilizations by immigrant workers—numbering up to 2 million at their peak—and the May Day walkouts, the first nationwide political strike in U.S. history, surprised the capitalist class and its two parties. These working-class actions stopped a move by Congress to pass a reactionary law that would have criminalized some 12 million immigrants without papers.

Today, as the police raids increase, capitalist politicians are again debating various “immigration reform” bills. All varieties would restrict the rights of foreign-born workers and should be opposed. Both the proposal backed by the White House and the bipartisan Gutierrez-Flake bill would beef up the border police, decree thousands of dollars in penalties for applicants, impose numerous restrictions on eligibility for residency, and institute a new federal ID card singling out the undocumented. Both include a “guest worker” plan, under which workers’ legal status would be tied to the whims of their bosses.

The purpose of the Democrats’ and Republicans’ immigration policy—from police raids to restrictive immigration laws—is not to deport all those without papers. It is to maintain a permanent category of workers with fewer rights who are more vulnerable to superexploitation that the U.S. bosses profit from.

Last year’s mass mobilizations showed the increased confidence of foreign-born workers and the consequent strengthening and politicization of the entire working class. This can be seen, for example, in the April 17 protest by workers in Marshalltown, Iowa, against a plan to turn local cops into la migra.

Such actions—relying on the mobilization of working people, not on Congress—are the only effective way to push back these attacks and win expanded rights.

Let's build the May Day actions to demand from the government: Stop the raids and deportations! Legalization now, with no strings attached!

"nuff said. Speaks for itself.

Democtrats Continue to Broaden Base.

(H/T Gateway Pundit ) Go to Gateway Pundit to enlarge. The story above was published in the official Iranian Fars News on Friday.
They must have been impressed with the democratic presidential candidates, especially since only 4 of the 8 democrats think their is a global War on Terror.


MEHR News reported:

Vietnam flashback

TEHRAN, April 27 (MNA) -- The U.S. Senate recently passed a bill according to which U.S. military forces would have to leave Iraq by March 2008. However, President George W. Bush has repeatedly stated that he would veto the bill.
But it appears likely the U.S. will be forced to leave Iraq in a far more humiliating way than the Soviet Union left Afghanistan.

This would be a major defeat for the United States almost as bad as the Vietnam debacle.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have cited the increasing unrest in Iraq as the main reason why U.S. forces should be withdrawn from the country.

The Democrats in Congress believe that stability can only be established in Iraq through a political solution, although such views seem overly optimistic, like the White House’s claim four years ago that U.S. troops would be welcomed as liberators. However, U.S. citizens are worried about the White House’s mismanagement of the war since it has become evident that maintaining stability in Iraq is almost impossible.

Many U.S. officials have even admitted that the implementation of Bush’s ambitious policies in Iraq over the past four years has been a miserable failure. Iraq has become a smoldering ruin while Bush is trying to prevent a total collapse by calling for the deployment of even more troops to the region.

Yet, after a meeting with Bush, Reid told journalists that the United States had lost the war and that a troop surge would not help. He went on to say that success in Iraq would only be possible through political and economic means, not war and bloodshed.

The Iranians have found their party!

John Murtha hits bottom, still digging... Upated

The Abscam scum has reached new lows. Not only does he call the troops "cold blooded killers" with no proof and prior to the investigation, now he come out with this.

From Congress Daily PM [subscription link]:

“Look, these guys have lied to us so much, I've even lost confidence in the military,” said Murtha, a retired Marine colonel with ties to the Pentagon.

Compare this to John Murtha, who in 1974, on the floor of the House said:

As a combat veteran, I want to repeat to the Members who are here that I know I complained on the floor recently that I felt that the criticism at home, in and outside Congress, hurt the war effort. I still believe that very strongly

and then said this:

I too believe the North Vietnamese read the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD. According to Page Robinson, they certainly knew of the antiwar speeches that were made before.

(H/T Gateway Pundit and Redstate. }

UPDATE...The "cold blooded murderers" as it turns out may be innocent after all and Murtha could be in some deep shit because of the investigation. Curt at Flopping Aces has the scoop and an extensive, link filled post about the "Haditha Hoax".

A Potpouri of Opinions from the Media

First of all, if your are a Democratic leader and David Broder, the Dean of the Washington press corps comes out with a scathing editorial, you know you may be in trouble. Not onown for his Conservative ideology, Broder lays in on the line in this Washington Post op-ed.

Here's a Washington political riddle where you fill in the blanks: As Alberto Gonzales is to the Republicans, Blank Blank is to the Democrats -- a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance.

If you answered " Harry Reid," give yourself an A. And join the long list of senators of both parties who are ready for these two springtime exhibitions of ineptitude to end....

...consider the mental gyrations performed by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) as he rationalized the recent comment from his majority leader, Harry Reid, the leading light of Searchlight, Nev., that the war in Iraq "is lost."

On "Fox News Sunday," Schumer offered this clarification of Reid's off-the-cuff comment. "What Harry Reid is saying is that this war is lost -- in other words, a war where we mainly spend our time policing a civil war between Shiites and Sunnis. We are not going to solve that problem. . . . The war is not lost. And Harry Reid believes this -- we Democrats believe it. . . . So the bottom line is if the war continues on this path, if we continue to try to police and settle a civil war that's been going on for hundreds of years in Iraq, we can't win. But on the other hand, if we change the mission and have that mission focus on the more narrow goal of counterterrorism, we sure can win."

Everyone got that? This war is lost. But the war can be won. Not since Bill Clinton famously pondered the meaning of the word "is" has a Democratic leader confused things as much as Harry Reid did with his inept discussion of the alternatives in Iraq.

He concluded with this:

Instead of reinforcing the important proposition -- defined by the Iraq Study Group-- that a military strategy for Iraq is necessary but not sufficient to solve the myriad political problems of that country, Reid has mistakenly argued that the military effort is lost but a diplomatic-political strategy can still succeed.

The Democrats deserve better, and the country needs more, than Harry Reid has offered as Senate majority leader.

.Amer Taheri in a NYPost op-ed asks a relevant question of Reid and the Democrats. "If we have lost, who has won?"

WITHOUT meaning to do so, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has pushed the debate on Iraq in a new direction.

Reid claims that the war is lost and that the United States has already been defeated.

By advancing the claim, Reid has moved the debate away from the initial antiwar obsession with the legal and diplomatic controversies that preceded it.

At the same time, Reid has parted ways with Democratic leaders such as Sen. Hillary Clinton, who supported the war but who now claims that its conduct has been disastrous. What they mean, by implication, is that a Democratic president would do better than George W. Bush and win the war.

Reid's new position, however, means that even a Democratic president wouldn't be able to ensure a U.S. victory in Iraq. For him, Iraq is irretrievably lost.

Some antiwar analysts have praised Reid for what they term "his clarity of perception." A closer examination, however, would show that Reid might have added to the confusion that has plagued his party over the issue from the start.

Because all wars have winners and losers, Reid, having identified America as the loser, is required to name the winner. This Reid cannot do.

The reason is that, whichever way one looks at the situation, America and its Iraqi allies remain the only objective victors in this war.

It gets better.

It's possible that Reid imagined that his analytical problems are over simply because he has identified the war's loser. The truth is that his troubles are only beginning. He must tell Americans to whom they wish their army to surrender in Iraq.

That Reid is desperately trying to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory isn't surprising. His party requires an American defeat in Iraq in order to win the congressional and presidential elections next year.

And for the coup de grace:

The terrorists, the insurgents, the criminal gangs and the chauvinists of all ilk are still killing many people. But they cannot translate those killings into political gains. Their constituencies are shrinking, and the pockets of territory where they hide are becoming increasingly exposed. They certainly cannot drive the Americans out. No power on earth can. Unless, of course, Harry Reid does it for them.

Will Americans live up to the determination of our "Greatest Generation" or will we succumb to surrender and defeat and truly snatch the defeat from the jaws of victory?

"Language of surrender is inappropriate..."

A "one minute speech" on the floor of the House by Kentucky's Geoff Davis.

Useful Idiots

While doing a search of Lenin's term in face of today's news, I came across an old post at American Thinker that just jumped off the screen at me. It is written by Amil Imani, an Iranian born American citizen and a pro democracy advocate. It is worth anyones time to read and digest it all. A few pull quotes to whet the appetite.

Islam enjoys a large and influential ally among the non—Muslims: A new generation of 'Useful Idiots,' the sort of people Lenin identified living in liberal democracies who furthered the work of communism. This new generation of Useful Idiots also lives in liberal democracies, but serves the cause of Islamofascism—another virulent form of totalitarian ideology.

Useful Idiots are na�ve, foolish, ignorant of facts, unrealistically idealistic, dreamers, willfully in denial or deceptive. They hail from the ranks of the chronically unhappy, the anarchists, the aspiring revolutionaries, the neurotics who are at war with life, the disaffected alienated from government, corporations, and just about any and all institutions of society. The Useful Idiot can be a billionaire, a movie star, an academe of renown, a politician, or from any other segment of the population.

Arguably, the most dangerous variant of the Useful Idiot is the 'Politically Correct.' He is the master practitioner of euphemism, hedging, doubletalk, and outright deception...

Talk about a wake up call from someone who has been there and sees what is happening in our own country. Chilling. I repeat, read the whole thing.