This is the Milblog Wire

What is really going on in Iraq?

That may be the question more people want an answer to than any other. In a recent poll asking which institution is most admired, the military topped the list. We now have the stories straight from these folks who have boots on the ground, and who the public has a large degree of trust in.

The Milblog Wire functions like any other wire service, aggregating stories from the field and making them available for your readership. The difference is now it comes direct from folks the American public has a high degree of trust in, not an overseas stringer.The content providers for the Milblog Wire are serving military members, their former comrades in arms, and their friends and families.

We are not affiliated with the Defense Department or acting on it’s behalf. We are self-policing for accuracy and scrupulous in maintaining the confidence of the public. We offer the good news that is overlooked by the ambulance chasers and a firsthand glimpse into the world most people just read about. We also don’t shrink from reporting the difficulties and downfalls of our efforts. We will provide the full gamut of rich media reports from our correspondents.

I am proud to announce that the following are participating as anchor members:

Active Military Members
Mudville Gazette- Mr. & Mrs.Greyhawk
CounterColumn- Jason Van Steenwyck
Sgt Hook
TF Boggs
American Citizen Soldier- Buck Sargent

Chairborne Rangers (Former military & industry experts)
Blackfive- Matt
Winds Of Change- Joe Katzman & Marc "Armed Liberal" Danziger
Jim "Uncle Jimbo" Hanson

Myself excluded, that is a very impressive and widely read group, but our strength is numbers.

I now throw the floor open to all Milbloggers, if you want in or know of someone writing quality stories, let me know. There are more than 1,000 listed at Milblogging.com, and we have many folks already picked out, and I would love to hear from anyone with Wisconsin ties. This is the anti-elite in action, we are the Army of Davids Glenn Reynolds wrote about. Technology empowered legions of first person reporters, and these come with much higher credibility and the trust of the American people.

The arrangements are simple. This is a personal initiative, however I will use my professional contacts to further it. I work for Capital Newspapers, which publishes two papers here in Madison, WI, we are part of a larger company Lee Enterprises which publishes 58 papers in the US. We have offered this service to all of them as a way to get stories their readers would be interested in, and haven't heard. If they use them in print or online I will get the authors paid. All I ask is an email saying we can rep your stories to the newspapers, all I promise is to try to get them published and definitely to get you paid if they are. Once we have any traction, we will donate a percentage to Soldier's Angels to help their amazing efforts.

If you are a reader of any of these fine blogs, then contact your local paper and tell them to add the Milblog Wire service. It costs them nothing unless they print or post a whole piece and we expect only fair freelance writing compensation. The whole point is to get the news Americans aren't seeing in front of them.

My email is below if you have questions or would like more information.

"U.S. media has done a miserable job of covering the war in Iraq. With embedded reporting that offered only anecdotes, rather than a full picture of the early stages of the war, broadcast news outlets in particular created a false impression of what was happening on the ground. Since then, the coverage has alternated between stereographic repetition of White House cheerleading and "local" reporting from a few square blocks around the "green zone" in Baghdad. Any source of information that offers broader insight regarding what is really going on in Iraq -- from Iraqis, from U.S. troops, from NGOs and from international media that has chosen to cover the story in a more realistic and honest manner -- will help Americans to recognize the mess their country is in. The Milblog Wire, at its best, offers some of this insight. To the extent that it amplifies honest and diverse voices from troops in the field -- as opposed to running predictable commentary from armchair corporals in the U.S. -- it can be a useful resource for sorting the wheat of truth from the chaff of spin that the Bush White House and its apologists have used to steer the nation and its finest young sons and daughters into quagmire."

-John Nichols Associate Editor, The Capital Times & Washington Correspondent, The Nation magazine

For information about the service, or the writers please contact Jim Hanson jimbo@unclejimbo.com