Topic: Military crackdown/blanket censorship

[Libertas]

If there is not any disclosure of sensitive information that could result in loss of life I am not sure what a general blackout of information achieves other than restrict the flow of information to official channels only which means the people back home are told nothing of the truth of what our troopers experience over there.  I wonder if Trap has any insights on this issue with respect to his son?

http://www.thunderrun.us/2012/02/where-have-milblogs-gone.html

[Pandora]

But we need their voices to be heard, they have a level of experience and expertise that is needed to temper the erroneous and sometime blatant falsehoods being spread by the enemy and the press. Right now a disembedded correspondent is on a mission to have the Red Crosses on the MEDEVAC Helicopters (Medical Evacuation) of the U.S. Army removed, so that they can be converted to armed CASEVAC helicopters (Casualty Evacuation). His belief is that because the MEDEVAC helicopters are not armed and fly with armed escorts that if we simply remove the Red Crosses we could arm them with weapons and they could fly on their own without escorts, thus shortening the time it takes them to get to those who urgently need them.

He's talking about Michael Yon.

Right now he is the only person out there asking for this to happen, he has written to Congressmen and gotten Washington involved. His dispatches appear on dozens of high profile web sites around the world, and there is not one voice out there countering him and some of his absurd assumptions because the Army’s rules on Social Media use have blacked them out.

Why do we need their voices, because no one cares what Big Army says about the topic, no one has even seen Big Army’s response to his claims and how removing the Red Crosses and adding weapons effectively destroys their MEDEVAC capabilities. Frontline bloggers could effectively rebuke his short sighted beliefs, but instead every day he releases another letter “supporting his position”. What does this mean for you - nothing if you don’t have a dog in the fight, but what if you have a son or daughter deployed to Afghanistan, who heaven forbid gets hit by an IED and needs a MEDEVAC flight, a flight that arrives with ALL of the medical support equipment (defibrillator, IV pumps, O2, Monitoring Devices etc.) needed to keep them, and their buddy, alive until they can reach a forward hospital, but instead receives one of this correspondent’s new CASEVAC flights, that got there with a medic and his aid bag of bandages and an IV?

Then it becomes important, unfortunately it may be too late.

I don't get it.  Why wouldn't a MEDVAC chopper equipped with the full equipment array still be used if the Cross was removed and it was armed?  The author doesn't provide any evidence for this, he just says so.

In any case, I believe the milblogs are gone because things are FOR SH!T in A-stan and neither this administration nor the Brass wants us to know what a FUBAR it is.

More on the chopper issue:

The real reason why we have unarmed, red cross-marked helicopters plying the dangerous skies of Afghanistan is due to an Army internal bureaucratic turf battle about who controls those helicopters!  Those helos require maintenance and manpower, and lots of tax dollars to go with all that.  There is also lots of prestige in having your own fleet -- plenty of exclusive transportation for the top brass, too.

If they arm helos and strip off the red crosses, then presto, they are just regular Army helos -- no special gig, though they can easily still be reserved for medevac.  American troops are dying just so one Army bureaucracy can have its own designated fleet!  We have suspected as much for a while, but our worst fears were confirmed when we received the following message.  For obvious reasons we cannot disclose a name, but this active-duty Army officer is very close to the action:

    I am an active-duty Army officer, and would prefer my name and email address not be used, if that is at all possible{.} ... Mr. Yon is only receiving pushback on the issue because the Army Medical Department is scared that removing the Red Cross from their helicopters will result in them being repurposed for general-use{.} ... {They} would rather put soldiers' lives in danger than chance losing control over "their" birds. This doesn't seem to be a rational argument, especially considering that every other branch of service, as well as our allied partners, manage to have armed yet still-dedicated ... aircraft, but that's the argument the upper echelons {are} expressing{.}

Shortly after that, we received another message:

    ... When I went through the MEDEVAC Doctrine course two years ago I asked the question, why not arm DUSTOFF {medical evacuation helos}?  I was told, "because then the army would lose its dedicated medical platform{.}"

So there you have it.  The Red Cross has nothing to do with the Geneva Conventions, but rather provides a convenient way for certain members of the top brass to remain relevant.  Taxpayer dollars; scarce Army resources; and, most importantly, the precious lives of our front line forces are being crucified on a Red Cross -- a cross which in this case symbolizes not the Geneva Conventions, not stoic dedication to the Hippocratic Oath, but rather a blood sacrifice to the self-serving priorities of the high command.  And in house, away from prying eyes, they're even admitting it.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/no_sex_many_lies_one_videotape_and_a_soldiers_unnecessary_death.html#ixzz1lo8GJf2r

[Libertas]

That much sh*t will still cause a big stink, they cannot stop the flow of information, they can only slow it.  Gives them time to spin but when push comes to shove Americans tend to believe the people there on the ground and not some REMF spouting off Pentagon talking points, so the whole damn thing is ridiculous!