*** Update and bump. Original timestamp 01:03
Censoring Iraq
Why are there so few reporters with American troops in combat? Don't blame the media. by Michael Yon
In a counterinsurgency, the media battlespace is critical. When it comes to mustering public opinion, rallying support, and forcing opponents to shift tactics and timetables to better suit the home team, our terrorist enemies are destroying us. Al Qaeda's media arm is called al Sahab: the cloud. It feels more like a hurricane. While our enemies have "journalists" crawling all over battlefields to chronicle their successes and our failures, we have an "embed" media system that is so ineptly managed that earlier this fall there were only 9 reporters embedded with 150,000 American troops in Iraq. There were about 770 during the initial invasion.
Many blame the media for the estrangement, but part of the blame rests squarely on the chip-laden shoulders of key military officers and on the often clueless Combined Press Information Center in Baghdad, ...
Censoring Iraq?
Michelle Malkin
Michael Yon has a disturbing article in the Weekly Standard challenging an information blockade by the Pentagon:
[...]
Read the whole thing. I hope the Pentagon has a good answer to this that does not involve sneering at milbloggers.
***
Mike Fumento was able to get through the system and has a series of blog posts on his latest trip to Ramadi. Go here and keep scrolling.
