True, but at the same, a lot of smart companies (Microsoft is a good example) are encouraging their employees to blog and do it openly. In the case of MS its made a 180 turnaround in attitudes of developers and other folks who have to implement their products. I'm sure they've got guidelines in place -- i.e. no bashing the company. On the other hand, I recently read a long justification from one of their programmers explaining why he'd switched to mac, and as far as I can tell he's still employed.

The question is, can you keep enough of that information flow to provide the genuine positive PR impact back home, and prevent leaks of information that can hurt people?

I mostly manage websites now to pay the bills, and I've seen at least one major nonprofit which had a very wide open forum for its members try to clamp down on controlling the message. Traffic dropped, followed by donations, because people no longer felt invested in the mission. I realize the case isn't necessarily analogous, but there's a strong argument for the internet as a real positive tool in communicating with the audience back at home which is rapidly losing patience with the unending stream of bad news from Iraq.