Retreat from the MilBlog high-water mark

John at Argghhh!!! has a link to the MNC-I (Iraq) Policy 39 – Unit and Soldier Owned and Maintained Websites MEMORANDUM outlining the how-what-where of posting for military personnel in Iraq. John judges it as about as fair as can be expected and I won’t argue that point with him.

What I think needs to be considered is that we should judge the day before this MEMO, 05 APR 05, as the high-water mark of deployed MilBlogs.

As stated here before, having your Chain of Command have complete knowledge and access to your webpage/blog and/or postings on other internet based publishing media will put a damper on primary source reporting, opinion, and information flow we are used to in the quick, honest, unvarnished manner we have become accustomed.

I am a very small fish in the MilBlog pond (or flappy bird, or adorable rodent – take your pick) but even as an anonoblogger let me tell you what this means to me: If/when I go to the MNC-I AOR, CDR Salamander will go cold iron. That is the only way I can keep CDR Salamander anon and brash as it is and not violate a lawful order. No other option.

On a macro scale, simple Freakonomics will tell you that this burden will result in fewer blogs and diluted content.

I accept the MEMO, don’t have a choice really, but the slack will have to be picked up by the folks not on Active Duty to get the real time stuff out. Speaking for myself, I will continue to follow the MEMO 100 percent. Sigh. Waiting for the Afghanistan version next. Then the CFFC version.

…from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic…

Hat tip The Corner.