1st Item - Hat Tips to...
Moderator Adds
I have today, 9th March 2016, merged in fifty-three threads which refer to blogs. I have not merged in many that debate the contents of a particular blog entry.
Since many of the blogs date back to 2006 they may no longer be active. Some were Member Blogs, but from memory they have not posted here for a long time.
There was a SWJ Blog Roll, but I cannot locate that now (Ends).
Blogs that have most graciously plugged or linked to us as we started this grand adventure:
The Adventures of Chester
Caerdoria
Cox and Forkum
HeyDudeWhoa!
Irregular Analyses
Ludovic Monnerat
Michelle Malkin
Power and Control
Prairie Pundit
ZenPundit
Maybe I should plug my own blog here
I got my own blog at http://hansmeister.blogspot.com/.
I only recently restarted it after a long hiatus, I'm focusing it on foreign policy and domestic politics. It still needs some work, but it's a start.
Liberals Against Terrorism (COIN Page)
Liberals Against Terrorism - Counterinsurgency. Stumbled on this while researchng another issue.... Some interesting discussions here at first glance - have not conducted any background research on the site - just throwing it out for our forum members' info.
Sunday Spotlight: PrairiePundit
PrairiePundit. Very good read for a quick down and dirty of current events and major issues. Maintained by SWC member Merv Benson.
The View From On The Ground
Blog by a Fairbanks Daily-News Miner embed - Reporting from Iraq.
Quote:
Think about everything you’ve heard about the conditions in Iraq, the role of U.S. forces, the multi-layered complexities of the war.
Then think again.
I’m a journalist. I read the news everyday, from several sources. I have the luxury of reading stuff newspapers don’t always have room to print. I read every tidbit I could on Iraq and the war before coming.
Everything I thought I knew was wrong.
Maybe not wrong, but certainly different than the picture in my head....
More than anything in the last few days I’ve heard from soldiers and commanders that people back home don’t quite get it. They don’t see the real picture. They don’t get the real story. Some of them, like Lt. Col. Gregg Parrish, look seriously pained in the face when he says only a part of the picture is being told; the part of car bombs and explosives and suicide bombers and death. It’s a necessary part of the picture, but not a complete one, he says.
I’ve listened to the soldiers and Parrish about the missing pieces of the puzzles that don’t reach home. My selfish, journalistic drive immediately thinks “Perfect. A story that hasn’t been told. Let me at it.”...
Battlefield Blogs Take Iraq War Into Homes of America
26 Dec. London Daily Telegraph - Battlefield Blogs Take Iraq War Into Homes of America.
Quote:
... In a development that is increasingly worrying US military commanders in Iraq, a growing number of American soldiers - 200 at the last count - have set up their own blogs, or internet diaries, and are updating them from the battlefield.
The phenomenon, facilitated by the provision of internet cafes at almost all US camps to permit soldiers regular contact with home, has for the first time allowed personal reports of the reality of combat to be read as they happen...
A US military spokesman said that failing to maintain some form of control of what soldiers were writing would be tactically naive as it could provide information that could aid the enemy.
"We don't have a problem with most of what they write," he said. "But we don't want them to give away the farm."
AEI Interview with Robert Kaplan at Regions of Mind
Geitner Simmons, Editorial Page editor of The Omaha World Herald and blogger at Regions of Mind has a post up featuring an interview with Robert Kaplan, author of Imperial Grunts.
An excerpt:
Quote:
"TAE: Why do so many reporters, academics, and some everyday Americans think that people who go into the Army or Marines must be folks who didn't have bright prospects in college or the civilian work force?
Kaplan: To be diplomatic, I think it's class prejudice and snobbery. Because most of the people I meet in the lower ranks aren't poor or from the ghetto — they're the solid working class, which does still exist. They're from non-trendy places in between the two coasts, or from working-class urban neighborhoods.
Look, for example, at one of the Special Forces teams I was with in Algeria. The executive officer, a graduate of The Citadel, was from a farming family in Indiana. The master sergeant was from a farming family in New Hampshire. The warrant officer grew up in an Italian section of Queens, New York. That's America. Whites in the barracks get very insulted if you confuse them with so-called white trash, and African Americans in the barracks get tremendously insulted if you confuse them with people in the inner city. With both groups, some of them may have come from the underclass, but they've long since separated themselves from it. They have no class envy."
New Blog Added to SWJ Blog Roll
The Officers' Club - Great stuff - check it out.
Small Wars Journal Blog Roll.
Counterterrorism & Fourth Rail Blogs Merge
SWC Member & Blogger Merv Benson...
Quoted in the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web.
Quote:
... And reader Merv Benson:
The al Qaeda document you reported on described the media strategy as one in which al Qaeda bombs and the media blames the U.S. and Iraqi forces for not stopping it. Sure enough, that is exactly the spin that the Washington Post puts on the Tal Afar story. Shouldn't they at least acknowledge that they are following the enemy's script?
Just to be different, how about discussing the wickedness of fooling noncombatants into thinking they are getting bargain flour so that they can be murdered and be part of a story attacking people not responsible for their murder?...
Merv's Blog can be found here - Prairie Pundit.
Midnight in Iraq and AfghaniDan
Two blogs added to the SWJ blogroll:
Midnight in Iraq - US Marine currently deployed to Fallujah, Iraq.
AfghaniDan - US Marine currently deployed to Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
MilBlogs - Check it Now - Check it Often...
MilBlogs - and a hat tip for the link...