U.S. Military Shows Its Side Of Iraq War On YouTube

[American Patriot]

U.S. Military Shows Its Side Of Iraq War On YouTube
LA Times ^ | May 1, 2007 | Alexandra Zavis

BAGHDAD — In one video, a U.S. soldier blasts insurgent gunmen with a heavy sniper rifle as the room fills with smoke. In another, members of an Iraqi family throw their arms around soldiers, weeping and rejoicing, after learning that their kidnapped relative has been freed.

The U.S. military has opened a new front in the Iraq war: cyberspace.

Moving into a realm long dominated by Islamic militants, the military has launched its own YouTube channel offering what it calls a boots-on-the-ground perspective of the conflict. The move recognizes that the Internet is becoming a key battleground for public opinion at a time when domestic support for the war is dwindling.

Islamic militants use the Internet to promote themselves and recruit followers with videos of tearful hostages, exploding military vehicles and U.S. soldiers cut down by sniper fire. No longer confined to a few obscure websites, the footage is turning up on popular video-sharing sites such as YouTube.

Now the U.S. military is offering up its side of the war. Available for download are blistering firefights across rooftops, nighttime raids filmed through the green glow of night-vision devices and a "precision strike" that wiped out an insurgent antiaircraft gun in a huge ball of fire.

"This effort was not designed to combat what ends up on extremist websites," said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq. "But we understand that it is a battle space in which we have not been active, and this is a media we can use to get our story told."

Military commanders have long complained about the "negative" slant of Iraq reporting, with its focus on the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since U.S.-led forces invaded in March 2003.

(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...

[Aplomb]

Now the U.S. military is offering up its side of the war. Available for download are blistering firefights across rooftops, nighttime raids filmed through the green glow of night-vision devices and a "precision strike" that wiped out an insurgent antiaircraft gun in a huge ball of fire.

I'm listening to Matt from Blackfive right now on talk radio. I don't see this channel lasting too long considering this bad news:

http://www.military.com/blog/blackfive

Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death
Noah Shachtman Email 05.02.07 | 2:00 AM
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops' online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.


Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result...

[Brian Baldwin]

I subscribe to many of the military video channels on You-Tube. As you can imagine the leftist media here at home doesn't report the truth... What a shocker.