The next panel has started up with Grewhawk moderating. Panel includes JP, Troy Stewart Steward, Toby Nunn and Christian Lowe. Introductions are going on.

1708: Greyhawk, MilBlogs not telling the whole story of the war, telling individual stories of the war.

1709: JP is showing us a clip from the Big Bad Voodoo Frontline series. The clip took place on Christmas day and shows Toby giving out mail and then talking about the activities of his platoon. The clip continues with them driving down the road and they start getting small arms fire. Of course, they return fire.

1712: Clip over and JP talks about how the series was released prior to them returning home. Someone mentioned it was hard for families to see that prior to their return. Greyhawk knew the Apache pilots we saw in the video.

1713: Christian was mad he couldn’t get to Iraq right away. He says this is a giant story for journalists and they have to be there. He tries to go back once a year. He was in Ramadi for the elections. He has been all over Anbar, where I was last year.

1715: He points out how easy it is for all of us to cover news. Points out how a lot of us have laptops. Continues to talk about a friend that went to Somalia and had to develop pictures in two shoe boxes. Big change since then.

1717: Phil says DoD wants to open up embed slots for bloggers. However we must be credentialed by a MSM source. Toby continues about the cost of sending folks over. Mentions Mike Yon. Says blogging is not a corporation’s voice but a person’s voice.

1721: Toby is talking about when he and JP were stuck behind a convoy and a bus with women and children was struck by an IED. Says say a beautiful site when Iraqi soldiers responded and declined help because they were able to take care of it all themselves. WaPo reported later in the evening that the bus was attacked by Americans. Because of the new cadre, they were able to set the record straight.

1724: Troy talking about things happening he wanted to write about in Afghanistan, but hasn’t. Not because of OpSec or painting Americans in the wrong light. Things happen that we really can’t talk about because of certain sensibilities. Says a program of instruction may be needed on blogging. How open are we going to be when blogging, will I be censored?

1727: Greyhawk asks was there any pressure from above re: blogging? Toby answers he never thought of himself as a writer. He sees himself as a fighter first. He also mentioned the cultural gap that has been a theme today. He says there is always pressure that you are on the right side of what you write.

1729: Troy told his deployed PAO and command about his blog. No one had problems, but he was watched. He got emails from lots of folks, including the National Guard unit that watches blogs. He was censored once by his wife. Christian says he hasn’t been pressured from the civilian side. He has had arbitrary ground rules with embeds. Some units want to see writings before submitted. Self censored when blogging on personal characterizations.

1733: JP had a supported chain of command both times when deployed. He says he kept to writing sensitive stuff such as care packages.

1736: Ward is talking about some things that went down with the Obama camp and on record, off record. Made a joke about change. Funny stuff.

1738: Troy talking about an interview he had over IM with a reported. Question that struck him asking about how blogs make impact. He is making comparisons between different wars and how we documented them at the troop level. Now talking about blogs and what they are doing for reporting wars now.

1740: Good question from audience about history reading. She mentions text books and then the smaller book with first hand accounts. Will blog posts be the first hand accounts? We all agree they will be and may already be.

1743: Christian talking about getting ambushed in Afghanistan twice in 24 hours. He tells her about footage he got and how they can sell it to news outlets. It was sold and was incorporated into a report. He wasn’t able to tell his wife it was going to air and she saw it just flipping through the channels. She knew it was him because he was the only guy standing up trying to report on the ambush. Brought out a few laughs.

1746: CJ asked a question about blogging about day to day activities when away from computers/internet. Troy made bullet points on 3×5 cards so he could recall actions when back to computers.

1748: Christian says porta-johns were routinely the subject of caption contests on his blog. He uses a notepad and goes through one a week when there. It wasn’t a small notebook at all.

1750: Chuck’s wife asks if there were any intense situations that they talked to their loved one about and asked if they should write about it. Troy had moments like that and still hasn’t written about some of them. Troy’s wife of 17 years knows when something wasn’t right and would get him to talk about it. Troy’s son wrote part one of a story and hasn’t wrote part two because he can’t bring himself to write the rest. Toby and JP could talk to each other about if they should post something.

1757: Greyhawk asks if JP and Toby were surge or scheduled. They were scheduled to go, but got moved up a month for the serge. Greyhawk talked about about food shortages from the serge and I added Anbar had the same problem in the beginning to the middle of the summer. All the additional units put a strain on the supply chain.

1801: Greyhawk asks about the change over the course of deployment(s). Christian is talking about a Quick Reaction Force shortly after he arrived. That set the tone for the rest of the deployment. The next deployment has a complete change in that there were traffic cops.

1804: Greyhawk turns to Afghanistan and Troy. Troy says all the bad guys leaving Iraq are going to Afghanistan. He is talking about poppy crops and other problems. There was a report that there is going to be a long battle in Afghanistan and redirection of troops to that area. Troy is talking about big difference between Iraq and Afghanistan and there are many. It is going to take a lot to win Afghanistan.

1807: Greyhawk is closing this session. Good topics! Next are the Milbloggies!