Army Shuts Down Blogger

One of the bloggers I’ve been following recently is  Leonard Clark an Arizona National Guardsman who is stationed in Baghdad. Leonard is adamantly against the Iraqi incursion even while he does his duty patrolling the mean streets of Baghdad. He has used his blog to stir up feelings against the war by reporting from the enlisted army point of view. He has also used the blog to build support for a run at elective office as soon as or, if he returns from Iraq. His blog entries were interesting and informative and appeared to be genuine. But on the 4th of July, that is Independence Day, his commander called him in and threatened him with courts martial and told him to shut down the blog. He describes this in a voicemail  (click here to listen) left with one of the bloggers on dailykos.com. It’s fascinating to listen to his account. I expect that the Army can find legal grounds to shut him down.
At the same time that Leonard Clark is seeking legal help a group of conservative radio hosts are flying to Iraq to prove that we are winning the war. From Fox News:
"Mark Williams, talk show host for KFBK in Sacramento and a member of the delegation, said the group will report "what we see and what we are told," but their collective feeling is that there is mostly good.
"We believe that the emphasis has been placed on the negative and if Americans knew what really was going on over there they would have an entirely different picture," said Williams.
"We are Americans first and journalists second, as opposed to the crop of 'pinkos' that tell us on the news every night that America is going to hell in a hand basket," he said."
I don’t suppose they’ll get a chance to interview Leonard.