SUPPORTING THE TROOPS THE BUSH WAY #2

Once again the Bush administration shows its contempt for our fighting troops in Iraq by having the Department of Defense block our soldier’s access to MySpace, YouTube, Metaccafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, hi5, Photobucket, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm and Live365.

The headline in our local paper read “Popular Web Sites Now Off-Limits To Troops”.

This online link between troops serving overseas and their friends and families was blocked Monday by the DoD.

The DoD said this new move “was not to prevent the service men and women from communicating with their loved ones,” it was “to maintain a balance between operations security and privacy rights when sharing information online is becoming commonplace”.

Military officials also said they blocked the Web sites because they took up too much bandwidth. “Our concern is network availability,” said Timothy Madden a spokesman for the Joint Task Force-Global Network Operations. “We’re trying to make sure that we have enough capability to do what we need to do for DoD missions: … war fighting, intelligence.”

Major Bruce Mumford, communications officer for the 4th Brigade,1st Infantry Division in Iraq, says the military will not spend more on expensive equipment to broaden the bandwidth and meet the demand. “The U.S. Army’s not going to pay the bills for you to get on MySpace and YouTube.”

And now, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. The ban comes just days after U.S. forces in Iraq established a YouTube channel featuring combat footage “to give viewers around the world a ‘boots on the ground’ perspective of Operation Iraqi Freedom from those who are fighting it.”

I guess they don’t want any real news to find its way out of Iraq.

The California Curmudgeon