Ground Level US Soldier Blog
From my good buddy, Mark, comes L.T. Smash, a blog written by a member of the US Armed forces deployed in Iraq, ostensibly though verification is difficult, as it is with Salam Pax of Where is Raed?. I've read enough of Salam to believe that it is truly someone in Iraq writing the blog, there may be some hyperbole but its real enough for me.

Which is a curious thing about blogs. They could be truly fanciful writing experiments by someone in the midwest or somewhere else, obviously with knowledge of the place they're pretending to write about but there's no reason that they couldn't be stitching their story together from news reports and other media outlets. I don't think this is that case with either Salam or Lt. Smash (a name that actually goes a very long way to explaining current US foreign policy) but it does make one wonder.

I believe reports I read on CNN because they've been established as a media outlet but there's really just no way to verify that a blogger is who he or she says they are aside from piecing their story together by reading their blog. But I do keep my salt lick right next to my computer so I can absorb everything with a grain or two. What's that old line? Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see? Yeah, that'll work.

But the whole blogging thing does give a very different and very personal perspective of the war. And being able to see the conflict from more sides should provide a better overall understanding of what's really happening.