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 Greetings! You are reading an article from The Mudville Gazette. To reach the front page, with all the latest news and views, click the logo above or "main" below. Thanks for stopping by! November 1, 2005
37 TrackBacksBill Garner/The Washington Times I've got to hand it to The Washington Post: They've got some integrity. When Democrats and their subsidiary mainstream news organizations are holding up Sandra Day O'Connor as a centrist voice on the Supreme Court e... Read More One of the reasons that I am confident that President Bush made the right choice in selecting Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court is the fact that the people opposed to the nomination are already acting wacky. Read More It’s interesting and troublesome to listen to the Democrats and assorted liberal interests as they continue to bludgeon the Bush administration over the Wilson/Plame case. A major part of their criticism, now, focuses on the possibility of damage don... Read More Linked at the Mudville Gazette. Read More Before the early morning news alerting us to the fact that President Bush would name Samuel Alito as his nominee to the Supreme Court I was writing this post. The point I was starting to develop was how scared the left appears to be. This morning that... Read More ...Capital Hill opponents accused the President and Republicans of trying to create an America in a "constant, perpetual state of preparedness" in a craven attempt to use "results" merely to hold onto political power. Read More Step one in the Bush recovery plan - Alito. Watch approval ratings bump combined with renewed conservative vigor as we take the fight to the far left. Dems will find themselves only slighthly less divided than over Roberts as any moderates left in th... Read More OpinionJournal has an excerpt from Richard Miniter's new book available for reading. Richard's new book is titled: Disinformation: 22 Media Myths That Undermine the War on Terror I think it was just released this past week or so. It's definitely Read More I feel compelled to comment on this news about the Senate going into a closed-door session, because it's another example of the advantages of thinking like a cat. A closed-door session can be forced by any two members of the... Read More President Bush’s swift, decisive nomination of Samuel A. Alito to the Supreme Court has stunned the liberal establishment and generated instant praise from almost all conservative leaders. ... Read More I am still collecting information about the procedure but what seems evident so far is that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has sought to keep the American people out of the Democrat’s business by closing the floor of the Senate for a “s... Read More With Judge Alito nominated for the Supreme Court, you'll be hearing a lot from MSM about his dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The people who favor "choice" are going to denounce Alito. Let's look at how the "choice" folks treated the Casey of ... Read More The judge presiding over the Tom DeLay case has been removed because of his extensive political involvement in Democrat and liberal causes including contributing to Moveon.org. Judge C W. Duncan, the judge deciding the recusal motion by DeLay, ruled th... Read More Today's dose of NIF - News, Interesting & Funny ... It's Kerry-180 Tuesday (+ Open Trackbacks!) Read More It all started with a simple podcast, and blew up into something bigger when Malaysian bloggers stepped in, causing two of Wendy Cheng's sponsors to bounce... Read More For goodness sake, 22 Democrat Senators voted against CHIEF JUSTICE John Roberts, whom Democrat Joe Biden called the best candidate to ever appear before the Senate. And yet he said that, right before casting his NO vote against Roberts. This doesn't... Read More It's time for the answers to Ask a DUmmy. This was a risky covert, double secret undercover operation. I sent my best agent into hostile territory. Fortunately, neither Scooter Libby, nor Karl Rove, nor Bob Novak, or whomever, did not blow Agent 00Stup... Read More U.N. Security Council Passes Syria Resolution[Hat tip: Big Lizards] By Colum LynchWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, October 31, 2005; 4:12 PM UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 31 -- The U.N. Security Council Monday voted unanimously to adopt a tough resolution de... Read More Unbelievable. The DUmmies think that Alito was nominated to the SCOTUS to deflect attention away from the administrations "ethical problems." Read More McPain has a slight problem: He seems to be unable to distinguish between what is good for the country and Read More I will be out of town from now until Friday afternoon sometime. I have asked a few others to keep you entertained here while I am gone. Our friend Lobo Kender of Kender’s Musings. A little warning for the liberals…Kender does not play a... Read More "Safety First" is a slogan in Your Business Blogger's household. Which made the trade show hosted by the Georgia Department of Labor on Safety, Health and Environment actually fun. Being in Savannah helped. The first goal of the conference... Read More Constructive Plagerism. Yep, that's right...plagerism. In any sort of management position, from the non-commissioned officer level to the top, we learn to scope out what the other person did/does in order to make our unit more effective. Is that bad... Read More This vacation has been a learning experienc for both the wife and I. We've both been to the Orlando area several times before, but this time is uniquely different. This time, we have our lovable service dog Dakota with us. Read More A "When I Wore Green" Post I was reading through the Best of Me Symphony #101 the past couple of days and ran into this post, titled "White", from Practical Penumbra that I really liked. The point of the post... Read More There are two developments that I would like to report on today. First, take a look at the picture here. Is this an Army Ranger? No, this person is a Navy 06 who has been detailed to go lead a Read More This presentation salutes America's veterans and shows the magnitude of their service this past year. These photos were taken by military photographers around the world. Download Veterans2005.wmv (10MB file) Another presentation - saluting Veterans acr... Read More Just got this funny video from my friend Ginny. Nothing like some good clean fun looking at men's legs, I do say the second officer does have a rather nice turn of the ankle with the heels and garter though! Read More While the MSM focuses on the negative aspects of U.S. involvement overseas, and while liberals look to the government to solve all problems, an overwhelming number of Americans have decided to support our troops through private efforts. Some send car... Read More The only difference in us is how our DNA is expressed... or how we choose to express our DNA expressions! Read More This morning Fox News has a more in-depth report on yesterday's close Senate session. The story goes into some of the history of the investigation being conducted by the Senate Intelligence Committee into pre-war intelligence about Iraq. According to I... Read More This was certainly offending news. A staff sergeant serving in Iraq committed what's described as "fragging" Read More Now I have never served but I did grow up in a military town (San Diego) most of my friends fathers were in the Navy or Marines. I have known/know quite a few folks in the military. Over There was not representative of the people I know. I would lik... Read More "One cannot be for us, and against the war. And in knowing first-hand the long-term strategic danger that the enemy we face represents, one can't be for America's safety and against this war either." Read More New on Fox Read More Today, we find the Chateau's favorite South American dictator rehearsing for the inevitable. Dateline San Juan de las Galdonas, Venezuela: Camouflaged soldiers jumped from boats into the surf and waded ashore in a mock assault Thursday, the latest i... Read More |
November 26, 2010America@war [Greyhawk]
I think anyone who's ever pondered the "comment" option - once only available on blogs and bulletin boards, now ubiquitous on almost any web site - will appreciate this:
The so-called faculty of writing is not so much a faculty of writing as it is a faculty of thinking. When a man says, "I have an idea but I can't express it"; that man hasn't an idea but merely a vague feeling. If a man has a feeling of that kind, and will sit down for a half an hour and persistently try to put into writing what he feels, the probabilities are at least 90 percent that he will either be able to record it, or else realize that he has no idea at all. In either case, he will do himself a benefit. That's wisdom from the past, captured for posterity at the US Naval Institute, shared via the web on the institute's 137th anniversary. From their about page:
"The Naval Institute has three core activities," among them, History and Preservation: The Naval Institute also has recently introduced Americans at War, a living history of Americans at war in their own words and from their own experiences. These 90-second vignettes convey powerful stories of inspiration, pride, and patriotism. Take a look at the collection, and you'll see it's not limited to accounts from those who served on ships at sea, members of the other branches are well-represented. I'm fortunate to have met USNI's Mary Ripley, she's responsible for the institute's oral history program (and she's the daughter of the late John Ripley, whose story is told here). She also deserves much credit for their blog. ("We're not the Navy nor any government agency. Blog and comment freely.") We met at a milblog conference - Mary knew (and I would come to realize) that milbloggers are the 21st-century version of exactly what the US Naval Institute is all about. Once that light bulb came on in my head, I mentioned a vague idea for a project to her - milblogs as the 21st century oral history that they are. "Put that in writing," she said (of course - see first paragraph above!) - and here's part of the result. Shortly after the first tent was pitched by the American military in Iraq a wire was connected to a computer therein, and the internet was available to a generation of Americans at war - many of whom had grown up online. From that point on, at any given moment, somewhere in Iraq a Soldier, Sailor, Airman or Marine was at a keyboard sharing the events of his or her day with the folks back home. While most would simply fire off an email, others took advantage of the (then) relatively new online blogging platforms to post their thoughts and experiences for the entire world to see. The milblog was born - and from that moment to this stories detailing everything from the most mundane aspects of camp life to intense combat action (often described within hours of the event) have been available on the web... And et cetera - but since you're reading this on a milblog, you probably knew that. And you know that milblogs aren't just blogs written by troops at war, that many friends, family members, and supporters likewise documented their story of America at war online in near-real time, as those stories developed. The diversity in membership of that group is broad, the one thing we all have in common is the impulse to make sense of the seemingly senseless, and communicate the tale - for each of us that impulse was strong enough to overcome whatever barriers prevent the vast majority of people from doing the same. Everyone at some point has some vague idea they believe should be shared - we were the people who, from some combination of internal and external urging, found and spent those many half hours persistently trying to write it down. But where will all that be in another 137 years? Or five or ten, for that matter. That's something I've asked myself since at least 2004 - when I wrote this:
Membership in the ghost battalion has grown in the years since, and an ever growing majority of those abandoned-but-still-standing sites are vanishing. Have you checked out Lt Smash's site lately? How about Sgt Hook's? If you're a long-time milblog reader you know the first widely-read milblog from Operation Iraq Freedom and the first widely-read milblog from Afghanistan are both gone from the web. If you're a relative newcomer to this world you may never even have heard of them - or the dozens upon dozens of others who carried forth the standard they set down. If you have a vague notion that something should be done about that, (a notion I've heard expressed more than once...) then you and I and the good folks at the US Naval Institute are in agreement. Preserving the history documented by the milbloggers is just one of the goals of the milblog project, the once-vague idea that we're now making real. And it's a big idea, if I say so myself - too big to explain in one simple blog post, so stand by for more. Likewise, it's too big a task to be accomplished by just one person. So if you're a milblogger (and exactly what is a milblogger? is a topic for much further discussion on its own) I'm asking for your help. All I'll really need is just a little bit (maybe just one or two of those half hours...) of your time, and your willingness to tell the tale. We've already made history, it's time to save it. (More to follow...) Posted 4:02 PM | Permalink |
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The Mudville Gazette is the on-line voice of an American warrior and his wife who stands by him. They prefer to see peaceful change render force of arms unnecessary. Until that day they stand fast with those who struggle for freedom, strike for reason, and pray for a better tomorrow.
 
 
 Furthermore, I will occasionally use satire or parody herein. The bottom line: it's my house. I like having visitors to my house. I hope you are entertained. I fight for your right to free speech, and am thrilled when you exercise said rights here. Comments and e-mails are welcome, but all such communication is to be assumed to be 1)the original work of any who initiate said communication and 2)the property of the Mudville Gazette, with free use granted thereto for publication in electronic or written form. If you do NOT wish to have your message posted, write "CONFIDENTIAL" in the subject line of your email. Original content copyright © 2003 - 2011 by Greyhawk. Fair, not-for-profit use of said material by others is encouraged, as long as acknowledgement and credit is given, to include the url of the original source post. Other arrangements can be made as needed. Contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com  Tending Distant Far from hearth and home, watching What tales we'll tell When things grim Some distant sunset, vision fading Saluting fallen friends whose names - Greyhawk, Baghdad, December 2004 |
