Policy change...

So is this farewell to Zimm's Blog (and others?)

Looks like the Army has decided to impose censorship on blog posts from members of the Army in Iraq and other places. According to the article, some leeway is supposed to be given to individual unit commanders.

Now I don't have any military experience, but I do have management experience. I can tell you, from experience, that when you leave things up to "manager's discretion," 90% of those managers immediately enter "cover your ass mode." That means that whatever the activity that's up to "discretion" is, is immediately disallowed. No manager wants to be called on the carpet and asked to justify why their employee did something that was allowed by "discretion," when the boss's boss doesn't have the same idea of what's ok and what's not.

I can only assume that this holds true for military commanders as well.

From a political standpoint, it's pretty obvious that one of the few remaining strong PR voices in favor of our presence in Iraq is that of the folks on the ground themselves. The political leadership in the US lacks credibility (that's being polite, I think) and many of us look to the opinions of the people actually in the country to find out what they really think.

While I understand the need to make sure that people aren't leaking anything important -- what's that WWII saying, "Loose lips sink ships?" -- this broad brush is limiting everything. Are any of these bloggers really saying "hey, Iraqis, we're attacking HERE tomorrow?"

I certainly haven't seen it on Zimm's Blog...