Watchyoursix not deployed yet

Watchyoursix is a reservist who has been mobalized. According to his subtitle he is a "a Citizen Soldier called to active duty on the far side of the world." He made it to a mobilization station at the end of May but has not deployed yet. In an email to me he said, "to be clear, I am not "openly defying orders" because I am not in Iraq and I don't work for MNC-I. If my current command issued such a policy, then i would shut this blog down before I registered it. to my knowledge, I am not currently violating any Army Policy. As many others have done before me, I would shut my blog down before I violated any such policy of a command I was in."

Watchyoursix, thanks for the clarification. It is interesting to note that watchyoursix (and other bloggers) decide to shut down their sites rather than register. Even though the policy does not restrict content (other than a few obvious concerns like OPSEC) bloggers don't want their commanders to know what they are writing. It seems to me that it would be difficult to actually report any information and still maintain anonomity. Sooner or later it seems that it would be pretty easy to figure out who is blogging from the content of their posts even without the registration policy.

Also, I've found some more information about justanothersoldier. He wrote a letter to the Army Times about his punishment that has been reposted here. He explains why he was punished, "My battalion S2 section made a hard copy of my blog and there was an investigation. It concluded that I had violated OPSEC, violated the Geneva convention (for photos of detainees), and that I was guilty of conduct unbecoming an NCO (primarily for a photograph of me sitting on a shitter, among other things)." He adds this about OPSEC, "The most interesting aspect of this entire fiasco is how OPSEC is defined, or rather not defined. Since there is no concise legal definition of what constitutes a violation of OPSEC (or at least not one anyone could produce for me when I requested it), it's impossible to determine when something crosses the line from 'not a violation' to 'a violation'. It's like trying to define what pornography is or bad taste in music. To make a convincing argument how OPSEC has been violated is trivial. You pretty much only have to smarter than the person you are trying to convince, or just instill in him enough fear, uncertainty, and doubt that he'll have no choice but to agree. It's like accusing someone of being a communist. If you disagree with the person making the accusation, you'll be considered a communist sympathizer, or maybe even a communist yourself. The fight is over before the gauntlet is even dropped."

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