Sgt Sostand
08-13-05, 05:47 PM
BAGHDAD, IRAQ - There were no reporters riding shotgun on the highway north of Baghdad when a roadside bomb sent Sgt. Elizabeth Le Bel's Humvee lurching into a concrete barrier. The Army released a three-sentence statement about the incident in which her driver, a fellow soldier, was killed. Most news stories that day noted it with just a few words.
But a vivid account of the attack appeared on the Internet within hours of the crash Dec. 4. Unable to sleep after arriving at the hospital, Le Bel hobbled to a computer and typed 1,000 words of what she called "my little war story" into her Web log, or blog, titled Life in this Girl's Army, at www.sgtlizzie.blogspot.com.
"I started to scream bloody murder, and one of the other females on the convoy came over, grabbed my hand and started to calm me down. She held onto me, allowing me to place my leg on her shoulder as it was hanging free," Le Bel wrote. "I thought that my face had been blown off, so I made the remark that I wouldn't be pretty again LOL. [short for "laughing out loud."] Of course the medics all rushed with reassurance which was quite amusing as I know what I look like now and I don't even want to think about what I looked like then."
Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate, firsthand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members themselves are delivering real-time dispatches, often to an audience of thousands, through postings to their blogs.
"I was able to jot a few lines in every day and it just grew from there," Le Bel, 24, of Haverhill, Mass., said in an e-mail message. Her site has received about 45,000 hits since she started it a year ago.
At least 200 active-duty soldiers keep blogs. About a dozen blogs were in existence two years ago when the United States invaded Iraq, reports The Mudville Gazette, a clearinghouse of information on military blogging administered by an Army veteran.
Under close watch
Written in the casual, sometimes profane language of the barracks, they give readers an unfiltered perspective on combat largely unavailable elsewhere. But they are also drawing new scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security
In April, Lt. Gen. John Vines, the top tactical commander in Iraq, published the military's first policy memorandum on Web sites maintained by soldiers, requiring that all blogs maintained by service members in Iraq be registered. The policy also barred bloggers from publishing classified information, revealing the names of service members killed or wounded before their families could be notified, and providing accounts of incidents still under investigation.
"We don't have a problem with most of what they write, but we don't want to give away the farm," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a military spokesman in Baghdad, who said such guidelines are nearly identical to those required of news organizations that cover the military.
Enforcement of the policy was left to the discretion of unit commanders. In late July, Arizona National Guard Spc. Leonard Clark became the first soldier found to have violated the new policy. He was fined $1,640 and demoted to private first class for posting what the military said was classified material on his blog. His site has since been shut down, although much of the content has been posted elsewhere on the Internet.
In at least one entry, Clark, who has run for political office in Arizona several times and was expected to run for Senate in 2006, suggested that soldiers were becoming opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq.
"A growing number of men here are starting to wonder why we should continue to risk our lives for this whole mess when we know that the government will probably pull out of here," he wrote April 11.
Other soldiers have said they decided to take down their Web sites after warnings from superiors. Last December, after an explosion in a soldiers' mess hall near the northern city of Mosul killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers, Maj. Michael Cohen, the doctor on duty at the nearest medical facility, wrote about the carnage on his blog (www.67cshdocs.com).
Soon, he posted this message:
"Levels above me have ordered me to shut down this website. They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I have made a decision to turn off the site."
Therapy, and a book
At least one former military blogger, however, is channeling the notoriety his blog earned in Iraq into a new career. Colby Buzzell, a soldier who during his 12-month tour of duty started a blog called My War (www.cbftw.blogspot.com, which stands for his initials plus an antiwar epithet), was eight months into his deployment when he read a magazine article about blogs and decided to give it a try. Within weeks, he said, his blog was receiving thousands of hits per day, and literary agents began peddling their services.
His book about his time in Iraq comes out in October. Now 29 and living in Los Angeles, he called war blogging "therapeutic."
"You go out on a mission or patrol, come back and sit down at a computer, and it was kind of a release," he said. "I wasn't writing for a book deal, I was writing for myself. It was a way to deal with the madness and made the days go by a little faster."
But a vivid account of the attack appeared on the Internet within hours of the crash Dec. 4. Unable to sleep after arriving at the hospital, Le Bel hobbled to a computer and typed 1,000 words of what she called "my little war story" into her Web log, or blog, titled Life in this Girl's Army, at www.sgtlizzie.blogspot.com.
"I started to scream bloody murder, and one of the other females on the convoy came over, grabbed my hand and started to calm me down. She held onto me, allowing me to place my leg on her shoulder as it was hanging free," Le Bel wrote. "I thought that my face had been blown off, so I made the remark that I wouldn't be pretty again LOL. [short for "laughing out loud."] Of course the medics all rushed with reassurance which was quite amusing as I know what I look like now and I don't even want to think about what I looked like then."
Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate, firsthand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members themselves are delivering real-time dispatches, often to an audience of thousands, through postings to their blogs.
"I was able to jot a few lines in every day and it just grew from there," Le Bel, 24, of Haverhill, Mass., said in an e-mail message. Her site has received about 45,000 hits since she started it a year ago.
At least 200 active-duty soldiers keep blogs. About a dozen blogs were in existence two years ago when the United States invaded Iraq, reports The Mudville Gazette, a clearinghouse of information on military blogging administered by an Army veteran.
Under close watch
Written in the casual, sometimes profane language of the barracks, they give readers an unfiltered perspective on combat largely unavailable elsewhere. But they are also drawing new scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security
In April, Lt. Gen. John Vines, the top tactical commander in Iraq, published the military's first policy memorandum on Web sites maintained by soldiers, requiring that all blogs maintained by service members in Iraq be registered. The policy also barred bloggers from publishing classified information, revealing the names of service members killed or wounded before their families could be notified, and providing accounts of incidents still under investigation.
"We don't have a problem with most of what they write, but we don't want to give away the farm," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a military spokesman in Baghdad, who said such guidelines are nearly identical to those required of news organizations that cover the military.
Enforcement of the policy was left to the discretion of unit commanders. In late July, Arizona National Guard Spc. Leonard Clark became the first soldier found to have violated the new policy. He was fined $1,640 and demoted to private first class for posting what the military said was classified material on his blog. His site has since been shut down, although much of the content has been posted elsewhere on the Internet.
In at least one entry, Clark, who has run for political office in Arizona several times and was expected to run for Senate in 2006, suggested that soldiers were becoming opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq.
"A growing number of men here are starting to wonder why we should continue to risk our lives for this whole mess when we know that the government will probably pull out of here," he wrote April 11.
Other soldiers have said they decided to take down their Web sites after warnings from superiors. Last December, after an explosion in a soldiers' mess hall near the northern city of Mosul killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers, Maj. Michael Cohen, the doctor on duty at the nearest medical facility, wrote about the carnage on his blog (www.67cshdocs.com).
Soon, he posted this message:
"Levels above me have ordered me to shut down this website. They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I have made a decision to turn off the site."
Therapy, and a book
At least one former military blogger, however, is channeling the notoriety his blog earned in Iraq into a new career. Colby Buzzell, a soldier who during his 12-month tour of duty started a blog called My War (www.cbftw.blogspot.com, which stands for his initials plus an antiwar epithet), was eight months into his deployment when he read a magazine article about blogs and decided to give it a try. Within weeks, he said, his blog was receiving thousands of hits per day, and literary agents began peddling their services.
His book about his time in Iraq comes out in October. Now 29 and living in Los Angeles, he called war blogging "therapeutic."
"You go out on a mission or patrol, come back and sit down at a computer, and it was kind of a release," he said. "I wasn't writing for a book deal, I was writing for myself. It was a way to deal with the madness and made the days go by a little faster."