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11 Jun 07
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My friend Ed Morrissey acknowledges that OPSEC is important but claims that "no one has any evidence that milbloggers have violated Opsec orders in their communications." This is a stunning claim, for anyone who understands what OPSEC entails and has read enough milblogs knows that isn't the case. In fact, the Army has an unclassified PowerPoint presentation that provides an example of what they are trying to prevent [emphasis and commentary added]:
"It is Monday again and we are still at K-2 airfield in Bayji [location]. As a squadron [size and type of unit], we are 'demonstrating a military presence.' [type of action] That means the troops set up checkpoints and stop hundreds of cars, searching them and the people. [explanation of tactical reasoning] They keep taking these 'detainees' or EPWs and I have partial responsibility for the 'jail', which is a building here on the airfield. [provides notice of prisoner location on base] But we are not set up for this. MPs are supposed to come and get them almost immediately but they take a while. [Elucidates point of tactical weakness] Plus the Civil Affairs/Counter Intelligence teams that are supposed to talk to them don't know crap and the whole thing borders on a war crime. I am just trying to find blankets and light and medical care for the prisoners. [provides propaganda from an American solider "admitting to war crimes."]
As any small-unit leader will tell you, this is the type of information that gets men killed.
The PowerPoint presentation also shows photos taken by a soldier and posted on his blog that were later used on a Jihadist site to expose weaknesses and areas for exploitation on American tanks and armored vehicles. Such information may seem trivial to civilians, but it is worth more than gold to a terrorist.
Unfortunately, my fellow conservatives appear to overlook or downplay this danger in order to defend the role of the milblogger as a counter to the mainstream media's coverage of the war. For example, another friend, Hugh Hewitt, writes:
I find this decision to be so amazingly ill-informed about how the milblogs have served the war effort and the cause of the military as to raise real doubts about the military's ability to ever get ahead of the enemy in the information war.
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Let me be clear. I love milbloggers. I was one myself before I left the Marines (though I was not a "warblogger" in a combat zone). But the job of our American soldiers is not to win the "information war" or to provide "unbiased, indifferent view of the war" or even to "tell the truth about The Long War." The job of American soldiers is to win the war. That can't be done when the enemy is being fed critical information through the blogosphere.
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Blogging has certainly been beneficial to the war effort but it has also empowered the enemy. In WWII, Japan and Germany had to expend a considerable amount of effort and personnel to breach OPSEC. Now, any terrorist who can read English and has an internet connection can set up his own mini-intelligence gathering agency.
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Our soldiers can't be expected to fight a two-front war: one in Iraq and one with the MSM. The primary concern of those who truly "support the troops" should be ensuring that they are able to fight effectively and with as minimal a loss of life as possible.
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The "benefit the milblogs and e-mails" is not worth the loss of life of our men and women in uniform. They aren't pawns in a propaganda game with the MSM. And what exactly is this "benefit"? Has the public opinion of the war truly been swayed by milbloggers? If so, then why is so much of the American public still misinformed and/or unsupportive of the war effort?
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In August 2005, a number of the most prominent milbloggers wrote about and expressed their concern over violations of OPSEC in the blogosphere. Dadmanly wrote:
Frankly, much of the most popular ("live action") combat reporting on the web makes me nervous. Many of these young men (and women) are not at all careful or discrete about their identities, unit compositions, and even very minute operational details. All of us understand how popular such accounts are, people back home and even fellow soldiers are really hungry for knowledgeable front line reporting. But this same accuracy and realism may be providing our enemies -- who gain some advantage they wouldn't otherwise have if we ignore their collection or reconnaissance capabilities -- with useful information for planning more effective attacks (and by the way, allowing them at least some useful battle damage assessment (BDA) information).
John from Argghhh! Acknowledged that it could be a problem and admitted to having inadvertently made a clear OPSEC violation on his blog. Blackfive even predicted that "in the future, Military Blogging would be severely restricted."
Two years later the prediction is coming true. That is hardly "out-of-the-blue."
Finally, as Dadmanly wrote almost two years ago:
I would hate to think that good OPSEC might interfere with what is some of the best reporting available on our great efforts in Iraq. But I likewise think that MILBLOGGERS need to carefully (and prayerfully) consider if, in the interest of feeding a hungry audience, we likewise satisfy an avaricious enemy. This is an enemy who knows how and where to get information vital to making his efforts against us more deadly and effective, and knows how and where and to whom to get this information into the hands of those who would harm us.
If we ignore this responsibility, aren’t we doing the same as the big media we so frequently criticize? In the interest of “hits” and traffic (equivalent after all to ratings or circulation), we go for the gritty detail, and disregard real and significant concerns about whether this in some way increases the danger to our soldiers?
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