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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! March 18, 2006
28 TrackBacksBill Schneider of CNN called Russ Feingold's unseconded motion to censure the president the "play of the week." Schneider went on and on about how Feingold has spine and is standing on principle. Read More There are several pieces out today on the issue of whether the arguments being advanced in favor of gay marriage will, over time, be used by those who practice polygamy as support for the argument that their relationships should be legalized. Fir ..... Read More This is an Open Trackback Party & Linkfest. Trackback to this post with any article you choose and I will link back to you.Linked To:Conservative Cat TMH's Bacon Bits Rhymes With Right Real Ugly American &... Read More I’m emotionally and physically exhuasted. It was an honor to ride with the Patriot Guard Riders again — I am overwhelmed by their patriotism and willingness to pay honor to those who gave all defending us. ... Read More I must admit, I was initially impressed with Operation Swarmer. When I first saw it on T.V. I thought to myself, wow, we are really fighting a war and not just standing by and watching people blow each other up. Read More Over the past couple of months, I've had some correspondence with filmmaker Deborah Scranton about her latest project, a documentary film, The War Tapes, which focuses on the daily lives of a New Hampshire National Guard unit deployed to Iraq. The foot... Read More ABC news has a brief summary of four documents from Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq, which include references to Osama bin Ladin, al Qaeda, and WMD. The documents are only four out of millions that need to be translated and analyzed, and the re... Read More Our energy use is a gigantic problem. So large that even President Bush noticed it. And it's not just the cost of oil, but how the money spent on it funds terrorism and limits our options in the Middle East. Read More Currently the ACLU are appealing to the U.N. Human Rights Committee with their cries of how evil the United States Government is. The American Civil Liberties Union and the U.S. Human Rights Network today urged the U.N. Human Rights Committee to ho... Read More We need our dope! Read More Somali pirates decide to open fire upon 2 Navy Ships… WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two U.S. Navy ships returned fire on Saturday on a group of suspected pirates off the coast of Somalia, killing one and wounding five, Navy officials said. The incide... Read More There has been criticism by many on the right regarding the medias handling, or lack of handling as the case may be, of the case of Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar. Mr. Taheri-azar was recently charged with nine counts of attempted murder Read More I haven't said anything about Operation Swarmer yet, partially because I seem to be trying to come down with a bug of some sort, partially because I didn't know what to say beyond Our guys are kickin' ass and takin' Read More Remember! Remember! The 4th of November!!!!!... Read More By Chrissy Zdrakas 78th Air Base Wing Public Affairs ROBINS AIR FORCE BASE, Ga., March 16, 2006 — It was a clear, cool night at Forward Operating Base Wilson near the city of Tikrit in central Iraq. Staff Sgt. Christopher F. McCleskey gave his can... Read More Palestinian militants stand with U.S. citizen Douglas Johnson, an English teacher at the Arab American University, moments after he was kidnapped .... Read More These are quite interesting. There is an entire thread that was hijacked for a while at KOS and the subject matter was soj’s identity. It’s quite interesting that soj, in his twisted mind, comes up with a whole post over at his site, mak... Read More When it comes to politics, the members of the military walk a fine line. For example, they cannot use their uniform or rank to endorse or reject a politician. I know that many are simply reluctant to talk politics at all and when press ... Read More Dubbed "Europe's last dictator" by the state dept- After 12 years of rigged elections, Lukashenko has threatened to treat demonstrators as terrorists, an offence with a 15-year jail sentence. (retained the Soviet acronym for his secret service ) Read More The Agreement of course has President Jimmy Carter's fingerprints all over it. President Reagan was inaugurated the day the hostages were released, and lumbered with the Algiers Accords agreement already signed on that very day. The hostages were relea... Read More What is courage? To make a film with Read More With over 2,000 American service men and women perished, the Iraq War is closing in on its third anniversary. The situation in that nation has not gone as well as many of us had expected it to. War began on shaky, perhaps faulty foundations. Victory,... Read More With over 2,000 American service men and women perished, the Iraq War is closing in on its third anniversary. The situation in that nation has not gone as well as many of us had expected it to. War began on shaky, perhaps faulty foundations. Victory,... Read More I bet that got Bill Clinton's attention. Due to the extraordinary fact-checking process at the paper of record - oops. Seems more like "whatcha got that makes ChimpyHilter look bad?". Turns out the hooded d ... Read More Susan Sarandon is set to play Cindy Sheehan in a "biopic" movie. This from SFGate: ...After stops for protests in New Orleans and Washington, D.C., she will breakfast in Manhattan with actress Susan ... Read More . . . I wondered if the protesters were from the neighborhood. Then I realized that wherever they came from, whether it was next door or down by the lake or from the suburbs, were visitors from another land. The land where wishing makes it so. In this ... Read More Captain Andrew Lovy, D.O. ... Read More I thought that this otherwise unremarkable AP report offered one bit of honesty from the Left that we have not heard before. Here is the whole article. Anti-War Artists Give Benefit Concert NEW YORK (AP) - Michael Stipe, Susan Sarandon, Cindy Sheeh... Read More 1 Comment |
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 |
What is this anti-War, Kool-aid drinking tripe doing here?
The Command T.O.C. linked with Operation Swarmer (Photo-OP) - A Bit Suspicous