War In Iraq: Blog Censorship

Michael Cohen is an Army surgeon serving in Iraq. He had a blog where he would recount day-to-day stories about the war and people in the war doing heroic things. Well, the Army ordered him to close it down. They said, "Sometimes a blog might contain subtle nuances from which you can put together a complete picture of our operations, which insurgents can use to attack us."

There has to be more to this. Liberals aren't giving it the usual spin of "He's telling the truth that the war is bad, and the conservative nuts in power don't want people to know that, so they try to hide all the truth that the war is bad and just give you lies." No, they're just giving it the basic "free speech vs. censorship" spin. From the blog clips Kevin Horrigan pasted in the newspaper, there was no anti-war tone to Cohen's writing - it was just simple stories of what he and others were doing in Iraq. And I don't know that I could have done anything with them if I was an insurgent.

It is certainly possible that current information about the war released to the public could be dangerous. But he's not reporting plans. He's telling about things that have already happened! Does the Army really view this as a potential hindrance? How so? But why else would they shut it down?

I'm not ready to give a verdict, especially since I've only heard the story from an editorial viewpoint of a liberal, and liberals tend to be anti-censorship in general. However, from what I can tell, this seems to be an improper infringement on free speech. If nothing else, maybe they can work out a compromise. Perhaps the Army can screen his posts before he posts them to make sure there's no dangerous informational content in them. Or maybe he can write them down and publish them as a book of sorts when he's done serving.

Is this blog shutdown a crime against free speech? Or is the Army just not wanting to take any chances? Hopefully I can dig around and shed some more light.

Edmond the Hun