Military Takes To YouTube, But Soldiers Ordered To Stay Away

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Military Takes To YouTube, But Soldiers Ordered To Stay Away — May 15th 2007

By Karina Longworth

The U.S. Military is embracing YouTube--and simultaneously banning soldiers from accessing the video sharing site while overseas. Netscape Navigator _kam0_ submitted this BBC story yesterday, which describes the military's new official channel on YouTube. About two months old, the Multi-National Iraq-Force channel gives the military an opportunity to highlight positive progress in Iraq. According to the BBC's Laura Smith-Spark:

Lt Col Christopher Garver, a spokesman for US forces in Iraq, told the BBC News website the project's initial motivation was simply to get the "great footage" being shot by the military's combat cameramen in Iraq out to a wider audience. However, it also serves to show another side of operations in Iraq beyond news reports of "the car bomb of the day", he says--and to counter the messages of anti-American sites.

The BBC article notes that soldiers have been invited to submit their own videos to the MNFIRAQ channel. But as the author also acknowledges, the military has recently begun blocking active-duty soldiers from accessing YouTube (as well as other media sharing sites, such as iFilm, Pandora, and even MySpace) across Department of Defense networks worldwide.

It's a move that's stumping some of the war's strongest defenders. Rob at conservative blog Say Anything worries that the policy will help "the anti-war cause more then it hurts it":

When the soldiers talk about Iraq it's usually not all doom and gloom unlike what we get from them media. By cutting off these soldiers' ability to communicate the DoD is essentially silencing their best advocates. Operational security is important, no doubt, but we've been in Iraq for 4+ years and YouTube/Myspace haven't been a problem. Why do this now?

Meanwhile, conservative maverick Andrew Sullivan draws a dotted line from the YouTube policy to this story, which mentions almost in passing that the Iraqi government is currently forbidding local broadcast outlets to show footage of bombings and their aftermath. "If you can't win the war," blogs the ever-dry Sullivan, "just censor the news."

The military says this measure is designed to free up bandwidth. But in conjunction with the recent decision to restrict active-duty soldiers from blogging, it's hard not to see this as an attempt to control the message coming out of the battlefield. At the very least, it's a safe bet that the military is looking to avoid another Hadji Girl-style dustup.

Tags: andrew sullivan, AndrewSullivan, blogging, department of defense, DepartmentOfDefense, hadji girl, HadjiGirl, iraq, military, soldiers, war, youtube

1 Comments

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

David Halko — 4:29PM on May 16th 2007

1. I am encouraged to see more video footage coming out of the Iraqi theater of war.

With the anti-war, communist, media, and partisans lining up against a Republican Administration trying to perform a duty for all of his constituents - it is nearly impossible to hear any of the good news with all the negative noise.

Even the most introverted observer with a half a brain understands that some positive events must be happening on the ground, even though there are no reports of it by the mainstream liberal press.

I can understand why soldiers are asked to submit their video for publication - to avoid possible classified information from being released.

Of course, I would say we need more classified information released, taking 3 years to get a short vague summary that 500 WMD have been recovered (with lethal agent) along the way, I consider this unreasonable.

The more significant problem is that the ISG had only investigated close to 10% of the reported WMD sites. Had the soldiers blogged & UTubed about the remaining sites, it would be much more dangerous for the Iraqi citizens who would be left receiving the brunt of terrorist actions by foreign fighters leveraging these munitions.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23576
(( [Dave Gaubatz] Charles Dulefer admitted the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) only searched less than 10% of all suspected sites. The four sites myself and other Agents identified in 2003 were not pre-1991 weapons. ))

Sometime, a conservative stand must be taken in the short term to save lives, even if the stand seems to go against the long term goals of those same people. Following the process can achieve those same long term goals, if people are diligent.

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