Media Channel

Thirteen sites have been declared off-limits on Department of Defense computer systems, ranging from MySpace to MTV.

The official reason given is that too much military bandwidth is being hogged to share photos, video clips and messages.

Ironically, the US military itself has just launched its own channel on YouTube, uploading clips of fire fights and troops helping civilians in Iraq.

“The US Army’s not going to pay the bill for you to get on MySpace and YouTube,” was how Maj Bruce Mumford, a communications officer serving in Iraq, explained the curbs to the Associated Press.

The decision is likely to damage morale for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, US military bloggers, including Colby Buzzell, latest winner of the Blooker Prize, the internet blog equivalent of the Booker, have told the BBC.

Yet the US and other countries with armies in the field today have genuine concerns about how the YouTube generation makes war, and particularly the impact on public opinion of raw video recorded by troops during combat.

Footage that makes its way on to the internet usually goes through unedited. It has content that can at times be graphic and is often accompanied by foul-mouthed real-time commentaries by the soldiers involved.

‘Distrust’

Colby Buzzell, author of blog-based war memoirs My War: Killing Time In Iraq, believes internet networking sites provide a vital breathing-space for troops in Iraq, and that the clampdown is a disaster.

“I think it’s going to totally destroy their morale - you have soldiers out there for their second, third, even fourth time,” he told the BBC News website.

“A lot of them have lost fellow soldiers. One of the few luxuries you have over there is the internet cafes - it gives you a sense of normalcy to go on websites and follow the news, be in touch with family and friends.”

Speaking earlier to BBC Radio Four’s Today programme, he admitted he did not know enough about computers to comment on the bandwidth issue but said he was inclined “not to buy it” as a reason, and had “kind of chuckled” on hearing it.

Fellow ex-military blogger Bill Roggio believes that the clampdown is “creating an atmosphere of distrust among the bloggers and the military” but the real censorship test, he adds, is if the Pentagon starts blocking the sites at non-official internet cafes used by its troops in the field.

Pointing out that the 13 prohibited sites are predominantly video and audio, he told the BBC News website’s Laura Smith-Spark in Washington there was a valid reason for rationing bandwidth.

“Corporations block access to certain websites routinely,” he said.

“The military is taking the position that these sites are hogs on their network resources and they may have a point.”

Dangerous diversions

“There is a very difficult trade-off between curbing soldiers’ access to networking sites and not making them feel isolated,” according to Peter Caddick-Adams, who lectures in military history and strategic studies at the UK’s Cranfield University.

He recalls how a few years ago, a spoof of the pop song Way to Amarillo being sung by British soldiers in Kosovo proved so popular on the website of the British defence ministry (MoD), that the site collapsed.

But such technical problems have to be weighed against the morale value of providing soldiers in the field with direct, up-to-the minute, credible communications with their comrades, he told the BBC News website.

Mr Caddick-Adams believes that the YouTube age has also thrown up security problems both on the actual battlefield and for the war effort.

Troops in Iraq have been known to go into combat wearing helmet cams (mini-cameras on their helmets) to record the fighting live and these privately bought cameras can be a dangerous distraction, the military expert says, as troops may jeopardise their or others’ safety in pursuit of exciting footage.

Coarse, brutal language and comments made in the heat of battle may find sympathy with other soldiers, Mr Caddick-Adams says, but the impact on civilians listening at home may undermine the war effort, and he feels this was an unspoken concern behind the US clampdown.

The MoD, he adds, may well feel obliged to follow the Pentagon’s example “as US forces in the two main theatres of conflict are fighting in coalitions and it would be difficult to keep one set of rules for one army and a different set for another”.

– By Patrick Jackson