BlackFive

ArmyWifeToddlerMom (who has the honor of the last word in "The Blog of War") is featured in a nice article in a Little Rock local paper.

Bloggers' take on military life
...[Rachelle] Jones says she stumbled on the world of milblogs in an attempt to get information of her husband's unit, which was in the area of Taji, Iraq. She found the blog of a private contractor working in the area and read it — and later other military blogs — for news.

"The whole time he was deployed … I didn't watch the TV news. I didn't want the kids picking up on it," she said, relating how she'd do her searching from 10 p.m. to midnight, after the youngsters were put to bed.

She read news not from journalists or pundits, but soldiers and civilians actually in the field who wrote not to entertain or push political agendas, but merely to share their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, be they harrowing firefights, mundane monotony, tales of dozens of soldiers and volunteers pulling together to save one life, or the shared, cathartic release of mourning a friend lost in the line of duty.

"I don't think it's hyper-patriotic ranting or anything like that. Most people just feel they really need to do this for their families," Jones said. "It's not journalism and it's not meant to be. It's just an account of what happened to you...

And John at Op-For writes of TBOW in order to avoid some chops bustin'...

...I told Matt that I'd have a review of The Blog of War up that evening. If I failed to do so, I said that he could "punch me in the face."...

Jules Crittenden of the Boston Herald writes of the Censorship issue of MilBlogs and of TBOW:

Blog of War Now Camouflaged
When something good is happening in the military, you can rely on someone high up and behind the lines to try to kill it. Slowly. Bureaucratically. Bleed the life out of it.

That is what is happening to milblogging, the Internet phenomenon that lets soldiers in Iraq tell us what they see, do and think...

Be sure to read the whole piece.