I'll be offline (and outdoors) in sunny southern Florida for the next week, so I'm turning over the keys of CY to my brother "phin" of Apothegm Designs to do with as he will.

Frankly, I'm scared. He's been known to be a little... warped.

I'll be back to inspect the damage and resume posting on June 4.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:27 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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At least when Andrew Sullivan spins off into the more paranoid recesses of his mind, he retains the minimal sense to claim he's just "airing a theory."

Not so with Steve Clemons, who wants full credit for his recent meltdown:

Multiple sources have reported that a senior aide on Vice President Cheney's national security team has been meeting with policy hands of the American Enterprise Institute, one other think tank, and more than one national security consulting house and explicitly stating that Vice President Cheney does not support President Bush's tack towards Condoleezza Rice's diplomatic efforts and fears that the President is taking diplomacy with Iran too seriously.

This White House official has stated to several Washington insiders that Cheney is planning to deploy an "end run strategy" around the President if he and his team lose the policy argument.

The thinking on Cheney's team is to collude with Israel, nudging Israel at some key moment in the ongoing standoff between Iran's nuclear activities and international frustration over this to mount a small-scale conventional strike against Natanz using cruise missiles (i.e., not ballistic missiles).

This strategy would sidestep controversies over bomber aircraft and overflight rights over other Middle East nations and could be expected to trigger a sufficient Iranian counter-strike against US forces in the Gulf -- which just became significantly larger -- as to compel Bush to forgo the diplomatic track that the administration realists are advocating and engage in another war.

A fascinating hypothesis, isn't it?

Unfortunately, the "logic" of Clemons claim has a few small—almost imperceptible, so tiny that you wouldn't hardly notice—flaws.

One of those infinitesimal flaws is the theory that Israel would have spent 6.5 billion dollars to procure 25 F-15I "Ra'am" and 102 F-16I "Sufa" long range strike fighters and easily another couple of billion on munitions, training, maintenance, etc, in beginning to prepare for strike on Iran's nuclear program in the past decade, only to decide to lob a few anemic cruise missiles instead.

I get the mental image of Baseball Bugs winding up in a frenetic and convoluted windup only to deliver an impossibly slow slowball against the Gashouse Gorillas.

Does Clemons honestly think that Israel has been preparing for this possibility for well over a decade—well in advance of their decade-long procurement and training operations—just to launch an attack that would almost certainly fail to seriously disrupt Natanz, and would not even touch the other underground sites where Iranian nuclear weapon development is thought to be occurring? Obviously, he does.

He is also flatly wrong about cruise missiles not needing overflight rights—the need to acquire overflight rights exists as much for missiles as they do for aircraft, and ours were suspended by both Saudi Arabia and Turkey in March of 2003, just as an example—and conducting such an overflight without permission could be viewed as an act of war by Israel's neighbors.

Israel will also obviously be bombarded by Hezbollah (And possibly Iran and Syria) for any strike on Iran, so to set themselves up to suffer massive rocket attacks like those of less than a year ago hoping that Iran would target U.S. forces in Iraq for retaliation is, well, a bit daft.

Why, precisely, would Iran choose to attack formidable American forces in Iraq in retaliation for an Israeli attack? American Air Force, Marine, and naval airpower completely own air superiority in the Persian Gulf and over Iraq, and so any attempt of Iran to physically venture into Iraq would amount to a rewrite of the Highway of Death on an epic scale, leaving the Iranian mullacracy in a severely weakened state. What would Iran have to gain?

Or is Clemons implying—merely "floating a theory"—that Cheney, the Joos, and Ahmadinejad are all in cahoots, and want a war in which all sides suffer losses for no real gain? Who benefits from such lunacy?

Halliburton.

Of course.

Sniff: I should leave the snark to Ace. The man is a master.

Update: I should have seen this coming, huh?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:45 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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How good of an idea is this?

Soldiers serving overseas will lose some of their online links to friends and loved ones back home under a Department of Defense policy that a high-ranking Army official said would take effect Monday.

The Defense Department will begin blocking access "worldwide" to YouTube, MySpace and 11 other popular Web sites on its computers and networks, according to a memo sent Friday by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander.

The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

"This recreational traffic impacts our official DoD network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant operational security challenge," the memo said.

The armed services have long barred members of the military from sharing information that could jeopardize their missions or safety, whether electronically or by other means.

The new policy is different because it creates a blanket ban on several sites used by military personnel to exchange messages, pictures, video and audio with family and friends.

My gut reaction? While I can understand the infrastructure demands that these and similar sites place upon defense networks designed first and foremost with military applications in mind, the ban once again shows a fundamental lack of understanding by military officials the importance online communications can and should play as part of a modern military's communications strategy.

Predictably, users of these sites will simply shift to similar sites that are not banned, and the military will waste more time and resources attempting to keep up in an ever-expanding, cat-and-mouse challenge as our ever-resourceful troops find new ways to keep lines of communication open with their stateside friends and family.

Instead of attempting to muzzle communications between soldiers and their social networks, the military should encourage communications between the troops in the field and their friends and family members back home. Time and again, the most positive messages coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan are those being voiced by our soldiers to friends and relatives in emails transformed into in blog entries and newspaper editorials.

The War on Terror is every bit as much a war of pixels and pictures and mindshare as it is a war of bullets and bravery. al Qaeda and the various insurgent groups know this instinctively, and dominate social networking and file-sharing sites. The Pentagon should engage their own Army of Davids and have our troops counter terrorist propaganda with their own frontline perspectives. Instead, those in senior positions who do not understand the communications battlespace plan to flee the online field, ceding it to the enemy.

There is no other way to address this than to call this flawed policy what it is: military communications shortsightedness of epic proportions.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:52 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Vast swathes of the Internet are mysteriously down today, affected by a peculiar virus specifically targeting keyboard drivers at university women's studies programs, academic journals, and certain political Web sites around the world. The virus corrupts specific DLLs and renders keyboards inoperable.

The virus appears to be emanating from a specific CNN.com Web server.

Computer users from these locations loose the ability to use their keyboards after viewing this particular story, where al Qaeda terrorists attempted to turn a all-girls school under construction north of Baghdad into a giant bomb.

The virus, dubbed "Cognitive Diss," does not yet have a patch developed, though antivirus teams are said to be hard at work.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:50 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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A reliable source passed along the following:

Fact Sheet
Army Operations Security: Soldier Blogging Unchanged

Summary:

• America's Army respects every Soldier's First Amendment rights
  while also adhering to Operations Security (OPSEC) considerations to
  ensure their safety on the battlefield.
• Soldiers and Army family members agree that safety of ourSoldiers are of utmost importance.
• Soldiers, Civilians, contractors and Family Members all play an integral role in maintaining Operations Security, just as in previous wars.

Details:

• In no way will every blog post/update a Soldier makes on his or
  her blog need to be monitored or first approved by an immediate
  supervisor and Operations Security (OPSEC) officer. After receiving
  guidance and awareness training from the appointed OPSEC officer, that
  Soldier blogger is entrusted to practice OPSEC when posting in a public
  forum.
• Army Regulation 350-1, "Operations Security," was updated April
  17, 2007 - but the wording and policies on blogging remain the same from
  the July 2005 guidance first put out by the U.S. Army in Iraq for
  battlefield blogging. Since not every post/update in a public forum can be monitored, this regulation places trust in the Soldier, Civilian Employee, Family Member and contractor that they will use proper judgment to ensure OPSEC.
• Much of the information contained in the 2007 version of AR530-1 already was included in the 2005 version of AR 530-1. For example, Soldiers have been required since 2005 to report to their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer about their wishes to publish military-related content in public forums.
• Army Regulation 530-1 simply lays out measures to help ensure operations security issues are not published in public forums (i.e.,blogs) by Army personnel.
• Soldiers do not have to seek permission from a supervisor to send personal E-mails. Personal E-mails are considered private communication. However, AR 530-1 does mention if someone later posts an E-mail in a public forum containing information sensitive to OPSEC considerations, an issue may then arise.
• Soldiers may also have a blog without needing to consult with their immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer if the following conditions are met:
  1. The blog's topic is not military-related (i.e., Sgt. Doe
     publishes a blog about his favorite basketball team).
  2. The Soldier doesn't represent or act on behalf of the Army in any way.
  3. The Soldier doesn't use government equipment when on his or her personal blog.
• Army Family Members are not mandated by commanders to practice OPSEC. Commanders cannot order military Family Members to adhere to OPSEC. AR 530-1 simply says Family Members need to be aware of OPSEC to help safeguard potentially critical and sensitive information. This helps to ensure Soldiers' safety, technologies and present and future operations will not be compromised.
• Just as in 2005 and 2006, a Soldier should inform his or her OPSEC officer and immediate supervisor when establishing a blog for two primary reasons:
  1. To provide the command situational awareness.
  2. To allow the OPSEC officer an opportunity to explain to the Soldier matters to be aware of when posting military-related content in a public, global forum.
• A Soldier who already has a military-related blog that has not yet consulted with his or her immediate supervisor and OPSEC officer should do so.
• Commands have the authority to enact local regulations in addition to what AR 530-1 stipulates on this topic.

The source suggested this was a "climb down" on the part of the Army. I honestly don't know enough about the original set of orders, or how they were enforced within the Army, to comment, but will link those who do when they post.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:15 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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Over the weekend, milblogger Jim ("Uncle Jimbo") Hanson was asked on CNN:

Let me ask you quickly, Jim, there's been a lot made of the media improvements by the insurgents, that they're doing a great job of getting their message out. What are we going to see from our military as we move forward against that press machine, when they try to balance it?

The military's response, written by an Army Major, borders on incompetence.

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.

I certainly understand the military's concerns about operational security, but this order takes us precisely in the wrong direction.

We need a greater flow of information, more firsthand accounts from our frontline soldiers, explaining to us in stark, sometimes vulgar language the exact nature of the war and the enemy we are fighting.

Military blogs, or milblogs, are the only way for frontline soldier to directly relate their experiences to the American public without the filters placed upon them by either the media or their military commanders.

Blog entries from Neil Prakash who formerly wrote at Armor Geddon, provided an irresistible, riveting account of the Battle of Fallujah from the viewpoint of a tank commander involved in the brutal house-to-house fighting. Prakash won a Silver Star during the battle he chronicled, and in writing about his experiences, provided a vivid window into the war that no reporter could emulate, a perspective that no dry MNF-I press release could convey.

At the time, Armor Geddon was perhaps one of the finest of milblogs, and did more to provide a real reflection of the conditions on the ground than any news anchor or wire service report. Armor Geddon became one of the first and most prominent casualties of the OpSec war. Prakash's blog fell silent on October 4, 2005.

One can only imagine what he could have accomplished in communicating the war effort since that time, had the military not decided to silence his voice.

Armor Geddon is just one of a galaxy of milblogs that could envelop the media organizations of the world, organizations that rely upon stringers, bureau reporters, and multiple layers of editors to provide a sterile, detached view of the war and the men fighting it.

Milblogs can and should be among our strongest assets is a war that is as much about perception as execution. Thousands of military bloggers, describing everything from excruciating boredom, to the rush of surviving the shot that just cracks past, milbloggers can serve not only as our first line defenders, but our first line of information.

If we want to win a war that is as much about information as it is about actual counterinsurgency, few can win the American public better than the American soldier or Marine communicating directly to the American people from their hearts.

I hope Army brass realizes this mistake before their concerns over operational security loses the war by not communicating "why we fight" to the American people.

Update: It's purely speculation, of course, but a couple of veterans in emails to Michelle Malkin have raised the possibilty that the new regulations were put in place as a response to harsh criticism of Harry Reid's "war is lost" comments.

The timeline--the order was issued April 19, well in advance of that particular defeatist comment--is wrong on the facts, but it raises an interesting possibility in principle: is it possible that Democratic pressure may be behind the Army's gag order?

Sure, Wonkette and others are quick to jump the gun and predictably "blame Bush" for the order, but like others buying that particular storyline, they obviously don't read milblogs.

Military bloggers are certainly not all fans of George W. Bush, but one thing is for certain, and that is that the overwhelming majority of them are strongly against the "retreat in defeat" plans that Democrats have been pushing since before the 2006 elections.

Who really has more to lose from a vocal military blogosphere? Is it the President, who has supported the military and their shared mission and still fights for it, or the Democrats, who seek to undermine every soldier's sacrifice and the Iraqi lives they are trying to protect?

NOTE: Any no, I don't personally think Democrats are behind this.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 03:21 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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