Blogs in the Pentagon?

Military readers of this site are likely familiar with The Early Bird,

"...daily compilations of published current news articles and commentary concerning significant defense and defense-related national security issues ... intended to serve the informational needs of senior DoD officials in the continuing assessment of defense policies, programs and actions."

The 18 August edition included Law Schools That Protest Too Much an article from Slate.

Two reasons I find this noteworthy: One, it's an internet source. Obviously the busy folks at the Pentagon aren't limiting themselves to dead tree sources of news.

Two, the author is Phil Carter, an army veteran who runs the blog Intel Dump. (I'd be curious to know if Phil ever had his opinions briefed at the Pentagon prior to leaving the military?)

By the way, the story itself is quite good, worth a read, and offers a truly balanced look at a very contentious issue. An issue on which Phil - a veteran and recent UCLA Law School grad - is uniquely qualified to offer his two cents.

On a somewhat related note: though I don't think Phil's status as a blogger had anything directly to do with his article's inclusion in the early bird, I must note that the Pentagon is aware of MilBlogs. Hugh Hewitt's archives are down, so I rely on fellow MilBlogger Chapomatic for this clip from his show:

Hewitt: General Myers, I have very narrow question. A lot of us who use the internet for a living and blog for a living are interested in this. There are a lot of military bloggers out there. Individual active duty servicemen and women who put their thoughts, their impressions of their duty stations and the world around them on the internet on milblogs. What’s your opinion of that? I love them. I hope you keep them, but what’s the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff think about those?

General Myers: You know, I don’t see that many of them, but based on this conversation Hugh, I will see more of them (laugh). I think, you know, when you get to the four-star level, you fight to get information from the troops and you don’t want to be a victim of just getting fed what the staff brings you every day. The way you work that is through the internet as you just mentioned or you visit places. You go to Iraq, you go to Afghanistan and you try and get down to the individual soldier, airmen, sailor, Marine level, coastguardsmen duty, civilian and look them in the eye and say, “How’s it going?” and establish enough rapport that they’ll tell you, and at my level it’s a constant fight to make sure that you get the straight skinny. I think it’s a good idea that I plug into some of those too in my spare time.

Interesting, in light of this discussion. Fear and Loathing is still being updated, by the way.