This is foolish. As the post notes, malcontents won't be stopped by an Army regulation, while good soldiers will stop posting. Much like gun control, blog control means that only bad soldiers will have blogs--or Marines, of course.
I mean, really, the administration and Pentagon are failing on this public relations job. Will they really stop the troops from doing the job that the Pentagon and administration should be doing? On their own time?
Come on, Army. You trust our soldiers with rifles and grenades and all manner of dangerous devices. Trust them to tell a proper story of what they are accomplishing in Iraq.
UPDATE: Either there was a backtrack or just a clarification:
Questions will be raised about who came up with this idea, and the answers will prove interesting. Maybe even interesting. There might even be tears.
And that's exactly what happened. After about a week, the army rushed out some clarifications. Troops don't have to get every message cleared, but they must "consult" with their commanders about their online activity. This seems to imply some kind of telepathy, but the army made reference to establishing "trust." There still might be tears.
What there will be in a greater implied threat of retribution if troops say something the brass don't like. Note that, when you are in the military, you don't have the same constitutional rights as civilians.
If military bloggers were effectively acting as an intelligence source for the enemy, the Army would be justified in shutting them down. As Strategypage notes, this is not a free speech issue.
But right now the real fight is here at home maintaining enough public support to fight this war until we win. These bloggers are an important part of this fight.
