I do not know a thing about the other two signing the letter, but the presumption I hold, unless corrected via a comment, is they share the same leopard spots as Norman Coleman presenty has, possibly with a bit less yin-yanging at reaching a point of conviction matching a point in time. A point of conviction mirrored in capitalizing, "War on Terror."
It is about oil and gas, not Terror, and that falsehood in the letter lessens its credibility. But at least it is or seems generally well intended.
I have seen blogging from Iraq called "from the sandbox."
Iraq called "the suck."
HELP: From anyone out there keeping up with the issue - is censorship real at present, or was the threat diverted? What does it mean to check with some command or security authority "before posting" - before every post, get a clearance, or before starting a blog, for a briefing of where some threshold of worry over compromise of security matters might exist vs. how we want to censor and spin whether or not the "surge" made a molehill of difference? What's the reality?
I am not one of the veterans. Will one of the veterans, or a current service member, claify by a comment here, or by giving a link, where things stand at present: Fourth of July, 2008, ramping up to an election where status on the ground in Iraq will be a political as well as a military and security consideration?
What's the deal, Neal? What's the plan, Dan?
__________________
A few links from that year ago situation are here, the site segment from which the Coleman letter image was downloaded (and an entry into a different worldview blogging opens up to me even with no July 4 posting on the blog's current page); and here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Baghdad Burning has been around a while, I still don't know what to make of it, fiction or not, but for Fourth of July, it is a visiting spot - purportedly not a milblog or a mil-spin effort. Take it with a grain of salt however.
That above selection is a sampling, not an attempt to be exhaustive. I suppose a Google = "milblogging," might give a better or more complete list. I tried it to see if there was any easy way to find if the year-ago thing was 15 seconds of fame, or still very alive, but found no real answer. Reader help on that history would be interesting. Here's a look at one, not a milblog, but a returnee, apparently now as a photojournalist [without the links, go to that blog for the links]:
Sunday, June 29, 2008
And another one's gone... another one's gone... another one bites the dust
The recently milblog-famous LT G is now assured of a book deal, and the milblog-reading public is now deprived of an erudite inside look into the current prosecution of the ground war in Iraq. No long tails, no FOB life, no ice cream cones- Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was exactly that- a blog of US soldiers at war. I'll take my "proud father" moment here- I found his blog just a few days after the Gravediggers hit the Iraqi dirt; a few days after I had mourned the lack of quality milblogs currently "on the ground".
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage
That was the post (of prescient title) that did him in. A too-real look at the struggle of a combat lieutenant to stay out of the mind-draining quagmire. No, not the media's Iraq: that quagmire is contrived and belied by the situation on the ground. This quagmire was the grind of the Tactical Operations Center, of the FOB life. LT G did not want to be a company executive officer. For a combat troop, that would be as good as suicide. The post he wrote about it got his blogging canned. Martyrs get books. Ask Colby Buzzell (who got called out of the inactive reserve for another Iraq deployment, by the way. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.)
It's too bad. I'll miss reading Kaboom.
Posted by Teflon Don [...]
Given the investment by one of the two-party system's players in having "the surge" look successful, one might expect an institutional will to manage "news" tightly, and there is this interesting connecting of dots, same source, earlier post.
[...] Once I get to Kuwait, I will likely be unable to update for some time. I’m told that the damaged cables the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf have brought internet access in the region to a virtual (heh heh) standstill. In the meantime, spread the word that Teflon Don is back in the suck and blogging again.
Is that saying there is more than one way to skin a cat, and was that cable thing cat skinning? Any/all comment info is welcome.
Happy independence day. Let's salute free speech. And truth.
Do you suppose Norm will write another one of those letters, and the cables will get fixed? Or have they been fixed and it's not gotten that much press coverage, war zone worries and all? Any/all comment info is welcome.
There were a few digital camera pics that got out before digital camera image leakage outside of MSM channels was noticed as an occupying forces "security" concern. Here are three from early in Operation Iraqi Liberation, one date stamped:
Not necessarily recruitment photos, are they.
And in closing, the Grand Iman, himself, says, "Happy Fourth of July."
