Welcome!

Greetings!

Whether you're a first-time or long-time visitor, welcome to the Mudville Gazette. If you just found this site from USA Today consider this an introduction. The Mudville Gazette is a web log, run by a military guy (me) and his wife. That makes this a milblog. Click that link and you'll find a long list of milblogs - the members of the MilBlogs Ring, a loose-knit group I founded in 2003. Some are sites run by active duty, Guard, or Reserve members, many from the front lines of Iraq, Afghanistan or elsewhere. Many milblogs are done by folks who have returned from such distant posts. Others are by spouses of GIs, and many are written by veterans or retired troops.

I'm currently stationed in Germany, but I also recently returned from a tour in Iraq. You can find a list of my early writing from Baghdad here. (My personal favorite is probably the first one - a farewell letter to my family.) My Christmas post from over there includes a list of still more bloggers who were deployed at the time.

If you're interested in seeing what milblogers can do, check out this collection of links to those who were covering the Iraqi elections.

Or this collection of reports on the bombing at a dining facility on an American base in Mosul.

How about coverage of the surge in terrorist attacks in Iraq this spring - long before most news outlets even knew what was going on?

And don't miss this collection of photographs from the front lines - stuff you can only find on MilBlogs.

We add new stuff here all the time. Have a look around, enjoy your visit, and come back soon.

Update: By the way, you are free to add your comments to anything posted here via the comment link at the bottom of each entry. I welcome any who disagree with my opinion to do so (respectfully as possible) and you'll find a lot of information in the comments section here. I readily admit that someone somewhere knows more about anything I write about than I do, and I appreciate those who add their knowledge to the discussion here. If you'd like to see some of the more lively comment threads on recent topics visit this post on the developing "scandal" at the Air Force Academy or this one on accusations of war crimes committed by soldiers in Iraq.

I suppose I should add this disclaimer. The Mudville Gazette is not an official publication of the US military. Unless otherwise credited, the opinions expressed are those of the author, and nothing here is to be taken as representing the official position of or endorsement by the United States Department of Defense or any of its subordinate components. Etc. etc.