[Ninong]

Last month a Marine officer wrote a letter to family and friends. It has been copied and is now circulating among a wider audience, including the generals at the Pentagon who plan and manage our military operations.

It's a rather straightforward, unbiased account of daily life in Iraq. It's not exactly the rosy picture being painted by George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condi Rice.

Time published it this week:


All:

I haven't written very much from Iraq. There's really not much to write about. More exactly, there's not much I can write about because practically everything I do, read or hear is classified military information or is depressing to the point that I'd rather just forget about it, never mind write about it. The gaps in between all of that are filled with the pure tedium of daily life in an armed camp. So it's a bit of a struggle to think of anything to put into a letter that's worth reading. Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, every day. The quest to draw a clear picture of what the insurgents are up to never ends. Problems and frictions crop up faster than solutions. Every challenge demands a response. It's like this every day. Before I know it, I can't see straight, because it's 0400 and I've been at work for 20 hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven't written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It's not really like Ground Hog Day, it's more like a level from Dante's Inferno.

Rather than attempting to sum up the last seven months, I figured I'd just hit the record-setting highlights of 2006 in Iraq. These are among the events and experiences I'll remember best.

Worst Case of Déjà Vu — I thought I was familiar with the feeling of déjà vu until I arrived back here in Fallujah in February. The moment I stepped off of the helicopter, just as dawn broke, and saw the camp just as I had left it ten months before — that was déjà vu. Kind of unnerving. It was as if I had never left. Same work area, same busted desk, same chair, same computer, same room, same creaky rack, same... everything. Same everything for the next year. It was like entering a parallel universe. Home wasn't 10,000 miles away, it was a different lifetime.

Most Surreal Moment — Watching Marines arrive at my detention facility and unload a truck load of flex-cuffed midgets. 26 to be exact. We had put the word out earlier in the day to the Marines in Fallujah that we were looking for Bad Guy X, who was described as a midget. Little did I know that Fallujah was home to a small community of midgets, who banded together for support since they were considered as social outcasts. The Marines were anxious to get back to the midget colony to bring in the rest of the midget suspects, but I called off the search, figuring Bad Guy X was long gone on his short legs after seeing his companions rounded up by the giant infidels.

Most Profound Man in Iraq — an unidentified farmer in a fairly remote area who, after being asked by Reconnaissance Marines if he had seen any foreign fighters in the area replied "Yes, you."

Worst City in al-Anbar Province — Ramadi, hands down. The provincial capital of 400,000 people. Lots and lots of insurgents killed in there since we arrived in February. Every day is a nasty gun battle. They blast us with giant bombs in the road, snipers, mortars and small arms. We blast them with tanks, attack helicopters, artillery, our snipers (much better than theirs), and every weapon that an infantryman can carry. Every day. Incredibly, I rarely see Ramadi in the news. We have as many attacks out here in the west as Baghdad. Yet, Baghdad has 7 million people, we have just 1.2 million. Per capita, al-Anbar province is the most violent place in Iraq by several orders of magnitude. I suppose it was no accident that the Marines were assigned this area in 2003.

Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — Any Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician (EOD Tech). How'd you like a job that required you to defuse bombs in a hole in the middle of the road that very likely are booby-trapped or connected by wire to a bad guy who's just waiting for you to get close to the bomb before he clicks the detonator? Every day. Sanitation workers in New York City get paid more than these guys. Talk about courage and commitment.

Second Bravest Guy in al-Anbar Province — It's a 20,000-way tie among all these Marines and Soldiers who venture out on the highways and through the towns of al-Anbar every day, not knowing if it will be their last — and for a couple of them, it will be.

Worst E-Mail Message — "The Walking Blood Bank is Activated. We need blood type A+ stat." I always head down to the surgical unit as soon as I get these messages, but I never give blood — there's always about 80 Marines in line, night or day.

Biggest Surprise — Iraqi Police. All local guys. I never figured that we'd get a police force established in the cities in al-Anbar. I estimated that insurgents would kill the first few, scaring off the rest. Well, insurgents did kill the first few, but the cops kept on coming. The insurgents continue to target the police, killing them in their homes and on the streets, but the cops won't give up. Absolutely incredible tenacity. The insurgents know that the police are far better at finding them than we are — and they are finding them. Now, if we could just get them out of the habit of beating prisoners to a pulp...

Greatest Vindication — Stocking up on outrageous quantities of Diet Coke from the chow hall in spite of the derision from my men on such hoarding, then having a 122mm rocket blast apart the giant shipping container that held all of the soda for the chow hall. Yep, you can't buy experience.

Biggest Mystery — How some people can gain weight out here. I'm down to 165 lbs. Who has time to eat?

Second Biggest Mystery — if there's no atheists in foxholes, then why aren't there more people at Mass every Sunday?

Favorite Iraqi TV Show — Oprah. I have no idea. They all have satellite TV.

Coolest Insurgent Act — Stealing almost $7 million from the main bank in Ramadi in broad daylight, then, upon exiting, waving to the Marines in the combat outpost right next to the bank, who had no clue of what was going on. The Marines waved back. Too cool.

Most Memorable Scene — In the middle of the night, on a dusty airfield, watching the better part of a battalion of Marines packed up and ready to go home after over six months in al-Anbar, the relief etched in their young faces even in the moonlight. Then watching these same Marines exchange glances with a similar number of grunts loaded down with gear file past — their replacements. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said.

Highest Unit Re-enlistment Rate — Any outfit that has been in Iraq recently. All the danger, all the hardship, all the time away from home, all the horror, all the frustrations with the fight here — all are outweighed by the desire for young men to be part of a band of brothers who will die for one another. They found what they were looking for when they enlisted out of high school. Man for man, they now have more combat experience than any Marines in the history of our Corps.

Most Surprising Thing I Don't Miss — Beer. Perhaps being half-stunned by lack of sleep makes up for it.

Worst Smell — Porta-johns in 120-degree heat — and that's 120 degrees outside of the porta-john.

Highest Temperature — I don't know exactly, but it was in the porta-johns. Needed to re-hydrate after each trip to the loo.

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and "battlefield" tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no effect on their preconceived notions of what's going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they've been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here.

Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O'Reilly.

Best Intel Work — Finding Jill Carroll's kidnappers — all of them. I was mighty proud of my guys that day. I figured we'd all get the Christian Science Monitor for free after this, but none have showed up yet.

Saddest Moment — Having an infantry battalion commander hand me the dog tags of one of my Marines who had just been killed while on a mission with his unit. Hit by a 60mm mortar. He was a great Marine. I felt crushed for a long time afterward. His picture now hangs at the entrance to our section area. We'll carry it home with us when we leave in February.

Best Chuck Norris Moment — 13 May. Bad Guys arrived at the government center in a small town to kidnap the mayor, since they have a problem with any form of government that does not include regular beheadings and women wearing burqahs. There were seven of them. As they brought the mayor out to put him in a pick-up truck to take him off to be beheaded (on video, as usual), one of the Bad Guys put down his machine gun so that he could tie the mayor's hands. The mayor took the opportunity to pick up the machine gun and drill five of the Bad Guys. The other two ran away. One of the dead Bad Guys was on our top twenty wanted list. Like they say, you can't fight City Hall.

Worst Sound — That crack-boom off in the distance that means an IED or mine just went off. You just wonder who got it, hoping that it was a near miss rather than a direct hit. Hear it practically every day.

Second Worst Sound — Our artillery firing without warning. The howitzers are pretty close to where I work. Believe me, outgoing sounds a lot like incoming when our guns are firing right over our heads. They'd about knock the fillings out of your teeth.

Only Thing Better in Iraq Than in the U.S. — Sunsets. Spectacular. It's from all the dust in the air.

Proudest Moment — It's a tie every day, watching our Marines produce phenomenal intelligence products that go pretty far in teasing apart Bad Guy operations in al-Anbar. Every night Marines and Soldiers are kicking in doors and grabbing Bad Guys based on intelligence developed by our guys. We rarely lose a Marine during these raids, they are so well-informed of the objective. A bunch of kids right out of high school shouldn't be able to work so well, but they do.

Happiest Moment — Well, it wasn't in Iraq. There are no truly happy moments here. It was back in California when I was able to hold my family again while home on leave during July.

Most Common Thought — Home. Always thinking of home, of my great wife and the kids. Wondering how everyone else is getting along. Regretting that I don't write more. Yep, always thinking of home.

I hope you all are doing well. If you want to do something for me, kiss a cop, flush a toilet, and drink a beer. I'll try to write again before too long — I promise.

[schrocat]

Ninong,

The Sandbox

[WillieM96]

Good read. I wish more stuff like that would come out. I attended a lecture on Middle East politics this past weekend (given by a former college professor of mine) and it depressed me to no end. The news is a joke, the information we're given doesn't even paint 10% of the picture of what is going on. There's more evil out there and, unfortunately, it's comeing from everywhere, not just the terrorists.

[Poseidon]

I had an eye opening conversation with our new office manager, she was in Iraq for a year. Tiff is a Captain in the Army reserves, and she just barely scratched the surface of what happened over there. One thing that she mentioned was NO TOILETS, NO SHOWERS, a large number of our troops still live in tent cities.

Good read Ninong, I hope it does some good.

[Ninong]

I hope the Marine major who wrote that private letter home doesn't get in trouble. If he had posted something like that on his personal blog, he would have been in big trouble. That's because he talked about his personal morale and he described events that took place in Iraq. That's a no-no now that Rumsfeld is cracking down on personal military blogs.

This memo was published in August 2006. Excerpts:

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, NO INFORMATION MAY BE PLACED ON WEBSITES THAT ARE READILY ACCESSIBLE TO THE PUBLIC UNLESS IT HAS BEEN REVIEWED FOR SECURITY CONCERNS AND APPROVED IN ACCORDANCE WITH DEPUTY SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MEMORANDUM...

*BLOGS,* OR WEB LOGS, POSTED TO PUBLIC WEBSITES ARE INCREASINGLY USED BY MILITARY PERSONNEL AS PERSONAL JOURNALS. (...) PERSONAL BLOGS MAY NOT BE CREATED/MAINTAINED DURING NORMAL DUTY HOURS AND MAY NOT CONTAIN INFORMATION ON MILITARY ACTIVITIES THAT IS NOT AVAILABLE TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC. SUCH INFORMATION INCLUDES COMMENTS ON DAILY MILITARY ACTIVITIES AND OPERATIONS, UNIT MORALE, RESULTS OF OPERATIONS, STATUS OF EQUIPMENT, AND OTHER INFORMATION THAT MAY BE BENEFICIAL TO ADVERSARIES.

The comments about the midgets being rounded up, the report of the attempted kidnapping of the mayor and other similar incidents would be prohibited under this memorandum. Any photographs that include any weapons of any kind or any identifiable background are forbidden. One guy got in trouble because he was still wearing his ammo belt in the photograph.

Any comments about being tired or overworked or the weather being too hot could be interpreted as revealing the state of morale and would be forbidden. In fact, any comment other than "I'm fine, how are you" could get you in trouble. And photographs should be taken against a plain white sheet background, revealing the soldier from the waist up wearing just a T-shirt. No unit insignia should be included and absolutely no weapons of any kind.

Just a couple of weeks ago, a British Army major in Afghanistan got called on the carpet for revealing in a letter home that the Taliban had captured some French special forces troopers and then tied them up and gutted them alive. That was considered classified information because it could affect morale back home and erode public support for the war in Afghanistan.

[Ninong]

Excerpt:

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

You can read the whole thing here.




The writer is on the right, his late brother is on the left.
If you guessed Pat and Kevin Tillman, you win!

[Ninong]

Check out this 8-minute video.

We're making wonderful progress training the Iraqi Army to stand up so that we can stand down. Not only do Iraqi Army officers order their men to NOT fire on the insurgents, it turns out that the people who are shooting at us and firing RPG's at us are actually the same Iraqi Army troops that we trained.

In the end, our guys arrest the Iraqi Army guys! It's an 8-minute film you should really watch.

P.S. -- And just last week we arrested an entire Iraqi police battalion! The police are under the Interior Ministry and the Army is under the Defense Ministry. Both are corrupt and both are infiltrated with militia members. Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister of the Green Zone, cannot do anything about disarming the militias because without the militias he would not be in power. The militias are the power behind the throne in Iraq.

[Ninong]

"It's never been a stay-the-course strategy."

Polls indicate that the majority of Americans believe that our "stay the course strategy in Iraq" is not working. What those Americans fail to realize is that stay-the-course has NEVER been our strategy in Iraq. That's just Democrat propaganda funded by George Soros and mysterious former Bill Clinton operatives.

I'm glad that President Bush has finally set the record straight. Staying the course has never been our strategy in Iraq! And anybody who says that was our policy hates our troops and hates our freedom.

It's time we change course in Iraq and abandon the stay-the-course strategy promoted by the Democrats who support the terrorists.

Remember: If you vote for a Democrat, you will die! And if you vote for a Democrat who wants to use blastocyst children to conduct stem cell research, you will go straight to hell.

P.S. -- It looks like Tony Blair got the memo: Blair said today that Britain would "hold its nerve" in Iraq. He used to say that Britain would "stay the course" in Iraq.

[Ninong]

Here's another Iraqi opinion poll. This one was conducted last month by the University of Maryland's Program on International Policy Attitudes.

An overwhelming majority of Iraqis have a negative opinion of Sammy bin Laden and more than half (57%) disapprove of Mahmoud "Mad Dog" Ahmadinejad.

That concludes the good news part of the survey.

Fully 61% of Iraqis approve of killing U.S. troops in Iraq (up from 47% in January).

Eighty percent of Iraqis say that U.S. military presence in Iraq provokes more violence than it prevents.*

Approximately two-thirds of Iraqis would like their government to ask U.S. troops to leave within a year.

Full article here.

*The head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, said recently that British troops were "exacerbating" security problems in Iraq and should withdraw "sometime soon." Tony Blair immediately said that Sir Richard's comments were taken out of context.


P.S. -- Those results are very similiar to the most recent State Department survey which found that 80% of Iraqis wanted us to begin to withdraw immediately and 61% said that the insurgents had every right to kill American troops.

[Ninong]

We now have 60,000 U.S. troops inside Baghdad and they are nothing more than targets for the government supported militias. We cannot even conduct military raids without prior approval from the al-Maliki government. And as soon as we ask for approval to conduct a raid, the government warns the insurgents that we are coming so that they can abandon the place we're about to raid, or worse yet, set up an ambush.

From USA Today:

U.S.-led raids often must be approved in advance by Iraqi leaders. This month, a unit in Baghdad got a tip about a torture chamber for Shiite death squads, but a planned raid needed clearance from the Iraqi side, said Capt. Kevin Salge, a company commander whose unit received the tip. Several days passed before approval came through. By the time U.S. troops conducted a nighttime raid on the two-story building, it was largely abandoned, he said.

The Mahdi Army is brutal in pursuit of its goals, [Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Nelson, an intelligence analyst with the U.S. Army's 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, based in Baghdad] said. Large red X's are painted on the sides of houses the militia wants vacated, he said. Residents know they have a few days to leave before their houses are firebombed.

The Mahdi Army has used the tactic to clear entire clans from neighborhoods and to empty the neighborhoods of rivals, he said... "They've infiltrated every branch of public service and every political office they could get their hands on," Nelson said. "As soon as the U.S. leaves, they'll be able to dominate the area with key citizens, key positions, key offices. They'll pretty much have the lay of the land."

[Ninong]

"It's never been stay the course!" -- George W. Bush, Oct. 22, 2006

[Ninong]

"We're on the verge of chaos, and the current plan is not working," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. said in an AP interview, Oct. 23, 2006.

That's a lie! Just a few days ago Deputy Leader Dick assured us that the Iraqis were doing "remarkably well" and the week before Condi Rice told us that we were "making wonderful progress in Iraq."

I don't understand why all these GOP senators, like Lindsey Graham, Chuck Hagel and John Warner and all those other terrorist sympathizers, are suddenly calling Deputy Leader Dick a big time liar?

[Ninong]

I think what we're witnessing is a move by George W. Bush to distance himself from Rumsfeld and Cheney in preparation for what will surely follow a big loss by the GOP on November 7th. As things stand right now, the Democrats are almost certain to pick up 20 seats in the House and five seats in the Senate. They need six seats in the Senate. They have a good chance of picking up six seats and an outside chance of picking up seven seats.

Changes will be made after the elections. I don't think there is much doubt that Rumsfeld will depart one way or the other before the end of the year. The Iraq Study Group of James Baker and Lee Hamilton will release a report concluding that military victory in Iraq is NOT an option. In fact, they are negotiating with leaders of the Iraqi insurgents right now to try to work out a framework for a political solution that would include the phased withdrawal of coalition troops. This is why we have suddently heard the administration use the term "timetables," as in they're going to give the Iraqi government timetables for the turnover of all security operations.

All of a sudden Bush is telling us that "stay the course" has never been our policy in Iraq and now he's telling us that we're about to set a date certain for withdrawal of troops. There is no difference between a "date certain" and "timetables."

If we're changing course in Iraq, then that means that we were on the wrong course. If we were on the wrong course, somebody's to blame. It can't be the President himself because he has never been able to think of anything that he has done wrong. It must be Rumsfeld and Cheney. They, along with Paul Wolfowitz, are the guys who planned the invasion and occupation of Iraq. No one listened to anything Colin Powell or George Tenet had to say. Cheney ran the show. Cheney's to blame. Simple.

Bush will accept the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group and that will be his excuse to change course. The Iraq Study Group will point out that our complete lack of planning for the occupation of Iraq and our lack of understanding of the political challenges we would face led to a situation that in untenable and our continued military presence is only making matters worse. Rumsfeld will resign either just before or just after the report is released. Cheney will retreat to his well known undisclosed secure location. He will make fewer and fewer public appearances.

Bush will now try to tell us that he's capable of working with Democrats -- that will be in his State of the Union Address ("state of the budget address, whatever it's called"). He will call for national unity and tell us that wasting time investigating what happened in the past is not in our national interest.

[Ninong]

"This is not a country that is awash in sectarian violence." -- Gen. George W. Casey, Jr., speaking at a joint news conference in Iraq with Viceroy Zalmay Khalilzad, Oct. 24, 2006.

Well, at least he didn't say that Baghdad was just as safe as Houston or that being in Baghdad was like being in Manhattan.

If you repeat it often enough, people will believe it. Yeah, right!

[Ninong]

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. and Iraqi forces on Wednesday raided Sadr City, the stronghold of the feared Shiite militia led by radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disavowed the operation, saying he had not been consulted and insisting "that it will not be repeated."

The defiant al-Maliki also slammed the top U.S. military and diplomatic representatives in Iraq for saying Iraq needed to set a timetable to curb violence ravaging the country.

"I affirm that this government represents the will of the people and no one has the right to impose a timetable on it," al-Maliki said at a news conference.

U.S. Ambassador Viceroy Zalmay Khalilzad said Tuesday that al-Maliki had agreed to the plan, announced at a rare joint appearance with Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who said he would not hesitate to ask for more troops if he felt they were necessary.

[Ninong]

The various Iraqi officials in the so-called unity government have all been saying that they want to hold their country together and not allow it to fracture into three separate autonomous regions. That's what they say in public but behind the scenes they are allowing Shiite militias (Badr and Mahdi) to engage in a campaign of ethnic cleansing that is forcing the Sunnis out of areas the Shiites want to control. And the Sunni insurgents are doing the same thing in the areas they control. Gen. Casey said yesterday that the country is "not awash in sectarian violence." He was playing with words. What he meant was that some regions are now totally under the control of one faction or the other and in those regions there is no longer any sectarian violence because there is no need for it. We have abandoned al-Anbar (1/3 of Iraq) to the Sunni insurgents. In areas in the south that the British have left, the Shiite militias have moved in and taken control of the local governments enforcing strict Sharia laws.

To complicate matters further, the two main Shiite militias are now fighting each other. Iran backs al-Sadr and his Mahdi militia. Iran would like to see Iraq split up so that they can control the southern oil fields. The Kurds in the north are perfectly willing to go along with partition as long as they get Kirkuk. That would leave the Sunnis holding the bag: The middle of the country that has no oil fields.

To complicate matters even more, Turkey is furious that Kurdish provinces in northern Iraq are sheltering rebels fighting for independence for Turkey's Kurdish minority. The Kurds who live in that part of Turkey want to join up with their kinsmen in northern Iraq as part of a new Kurdistan. The only thing that keeps Turkey from attacking Kurds in Iraq is the presence of the U.S. military in Iraq.

The whole region is a mess right now. Iran backs the Shiites in Iraq and the Arab countries in the region back the Sunnis in Iraq. That's because those countries are all Sunni dominated. Only Iraq and Iran have large Shiite populations, and Iran is not an arab country.

We aren't going to get a political solution in Iraq unless we engage both Iran and Syria. It's called diplomacy! Sometimes you have to talk with your adversaries. The Bush Administration's view of diplomacy is that we talk with the British and threaten everyone else with cruise missiles. And the real reason they won't talk with Iran and Syria is because they want to maintain a permanent military presence in Iraq in order to control the oil fields and they know that Iran and Syria won't go along with permanent U.S. military bases anywhere in the region. Many people believe that the real reason we invaded Iraq was to control the oil fields.

Whatever our real reasons for invading Iraq, our presence there has not made the region more stable. In fact, one could say that it is more volatile now because of our presence there.

BTW, has anyone seen Sammy bin Laden or Mullah Omar lately? Does anyone care? And why is NATO negotiating with the Taliban???

[Ninong]

Well, for starters, 72% of them think we should be out of Iraq by February 2007 -- four months from now.

That's what Zogby found back in February 2006. Only 23% think we should stay as long as we are needed.

[Ninong]

Nouri al-Maliki, Prime Minister of the Green Zone, said that he doesn't pay attention to President Bush's calls for "benchmarks" or "timetables" because he knows that this is all just pre-election political talk. And besides, his is a sovereign nation and nobody is going to tell them what to do or when to do it. Meaning he has no intention of disarming the Shiite militias. If he did, we would soon see him separated from his head in one of those videos that get posted on the Internet.

You have to admit, it can be confusing trying to figure out what Bush is up to. In the past week alone Bush has told us that he is "staying the course," that he is altering his "tactics" and, finally, that he never said "stay the course." It must be hard for the Green Zone Prime Minister to understand our Twilight Zone President.

[Ninong]

Has anyone else noticed that Bush is no longer talking about spreading democracy in the Middle East?

Whatever happened to our Plan for Victory, our Strategy for Victory, Mission Accomplished, Freedom's on the March, Spreading Democracy and all that stuff? All I'm hearing now is that any government capable of defending itself equals mission accomplished!

[Ninong]

From Wonkette:







Another Marine stationed in Iraq has sent us a screenshot of what happens when you need some hot news on Macaca and Foley:

forbidden, this page (Wonkette, Politics for People with Dirty Minds) is categorized as (Personal Pages) ALL SITES YOU VISIT ARE LOGGED AND FILED.

Nice little threat at the end, too. Asswipes.

Notice the other browser tabs. Two actual “personal pages” that rah-rah for Bush (What’s her name, the wannabe Coulter, and Hugh Hewitt) show up just fine, as our Marine Operative confirms. But “Talking Points Memo,” which is apparently one of the “left leaning” sites one hears so much about these days, is prohibited.

Writes the Corporal: “I think that this kind of censoring is a big deal. I can understand blocking porn, music and movies, and blatantly illegal sites, but blocking sites that some higher up just doesn’t agree with is disgusting. They are blocking a huge portion of voters from information that will help them determine which side to vote for. Because of this, the only news we get is from the big corporations or conservative based sites.”

P.S. -- This is not the first report like this that I have seen. Liberal blogs are blocked but right-wing blogs are not blocked. It seems to be a local decision by individual commands, either at battalion level or brigade level, because some guys report no problems accessing any blogs (other than porno stuff) and others report that they can only access right-wing, Republican style blogs, like Michelle Malkin, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, etc.