Thursday, April 07, 2005

Deliberately Vague

I'm going to apologize in advance for how vague I have to be on this blog. I'm not going to reveal my real name, my real unit, or anything that could be used to figure out exactly who I am. There are two main reasons for this OPSEC (OPerational SECurity) in order:
1. Protecting the other soldiers I serve with. If I write about exactly where we are and what we do, someone could use this information to attack us.
2. Protecting my own sorry ass. The Army has been taking an interest in shutting down soldier's weblogs lately. Even though I don't agree with what this particular individual wrote, I personally know another soldier who was disciplined and then passed over for promotion due to what he wrote on his blog.
I understand that soldiers protect free speech, they don't practice it. I realize that talking bad about your chain of command is "prejudicial to good order and discipline," so if I write about my dealings with someone in my unit, i will be as vague as possible. My goal is to talk about a situation in such a way that a soldier in my own unit, reading my blog, will not be able to connect the dots and realize that someone in his unit is commenting on someone else in his unit. Therefore, I should not be adversely affecting the morale or chain of command in my unit.
I hope this works. Oh, and by the way, the things I write here are not the official word of the Dept of Defense, the US Army, The Army Reserves, my parents, or my spouse. The things that appear on this blog are solely my opinions and thoughts.