Uh-oh

This isn’t good. Especially when the Iraq Study Group is seriously considering recommending that the U.S. directly engage Iran and Syria in helping to secure Iraq.
From ABC News:
U.S. officials say they have found smoking-gun evidence of Iranian support for terrorists in Iraq: brand-new weapons fresh from Iranian factories. According to a senior defense official, coalition [...]

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Through the Ringer: Adventures of Chester

In the new Through the Ringer series, I will be doing short interviews with milbloggers, military officials, defense contractors and others who have something to share about the military and new media. If you would like to nominate someone to be put Through the Ringer, send me an e-mail at dringblog (at) gmail (dot) com.

I’ve [...]

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CENTCOM is back in the game

Ok, so I lied when I told you I wouldn’t be writing about Patterico again.
But this time, it is good news for CENTCOM.
Patterico updated with a message from the CENTCOM Electronic Media Engagement Team.
Sir,
I understand you ran into a bit of difficulty with our press desk last week.
I hope we can consider that water under [...]

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Wired: Army Game Proves U.S. Can’t Lose

From Wired:
A new video game commissioned by the U.S. Army as a recruiting tool portrays the nation’s military in 2015 as an invulnerable high-tech machine.
The new PC title, Future Force Company Commander, or F2C2, is a nifty God-game that puts players in the driver’s seat of 18 systems at the heart of the military’s [...]

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Civil War?

Yesterday, NBC News announced that they would officially begin referring to the conflict in Iraq as a civil war.How has the online world been talking about it?
Here is a chart for posts containing “Iraq” and “Civil War” from Technorati over the last month:

Seems to be going up. Now here is the same chart over the [...]

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Army Strong and Army Wrong

Good job, Gary Bishop.
But not good enough.
Back in October, when I first heard that Army would be abandoning “Army of One” in favor of “Army Strong,” I wondered how long it would be before the “Army Wrong” parodies would pop up.
Don’t get me wrong. I love Army Strong. I think it is great — it [...]

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On the ball

I had every intention this morning of chastising Army Recruiting and McCann-Erickson, the Army’s advertising contractor.
Instead, I have to commend them.
Yesterday, I noticed that a Google search of “Army Strong” listed the Army’s Web site as the third search result rather than the first (behind Blackfive and a Boston.com article).
This morning, it has been fixed. [...]

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Responding to the DoD blog “crackdown”

I have said before that I think the term “crackdown” is an unfair descriptor of the activities of the Virginia National Guard unit that is monitoring blog conversation among Soldiers for potential OPSEC violations.
Some have responded to this “crackdown” by shuttering their blogs.
Here is a response I like much better (from Tadpole):
I will promise this [...]

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A war blog study (without milblogs)

How does one write a scholarly analysis of the online conversation about the war in Iraq without citing milblogs?
I’m not sure, but apparently, it has been done.
I came across this paper, published in the latest edition of the Journal of Computer Mediated Communication while doing research for a paper I am working on for one [...]

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Happy Thanksgiving

I am off to Chicago for Thanksgiving, so I’ll be stepping out of the D-Ring for a bit. But I’ll be back soon.
In the mean time, at this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, remember those who can’t be home with their families because they are fighting to protect all of us.

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