The Political Conundrum!

I have talked about this piece of crap several times, Nick Meo that is. I have covered his actions here, here, here and here. Well he is up to it again or at least he and his employer have been. When the Army Public affairs officer from Afghanistan first told me and other milbloggers about how Meo acted completely unprofessional and unethical while embedded with US forces from Task Force Phoenix, I along with many others in the milblog community jumped on this.

We all blogged about it and then you, YES YOU, the milblog reader acted and sent emails to Meo and the Sunday Telegraph, forwarded the blog links to your friends, etc. I don’t think we ever know or appreciate how much power the blogosphere has, and more specifically the milblog world has.

The feedback to Meo and the Telegraph was so great that they went crying to the NATO run International Security and Assistance Force (ISAF). You may remember the acronym ISAF, as I have blogged about it several times, to include what US soldiers downrange through it stood for. I blogged about that here. Anyway, I digress…so they complained to ISAF which really means nothing. Task Force Phoenix does not fall within the chain of command of that NATO force, nor do they care what ISAF cares about or not. The sad part is that the overly pompous ISAF leadership thought they could say something and tried to get involved, but CSTC-A was cordial enough to essentially hold their hand up and say “talk to the hand, becuase they ears aren’t listening”. TF Phoenix works for CSTC-A and not ISAF, so ISAF had to essentially go back to the Telegraph and Nick Meo and tell them “sorry there is nothing we can do”.

The bigger story here is, what if they could do something? What the F@#$ were they going to do? I don’t work for TF Phoenix anymore, as I am back to being a civilian. None of the other bloggers that wrote about this work for TF Pheonix either. We are independent civilians that are expressing our freedom of speech to say whatever we want. I am not sure what the Telegraph or ISAF was thinking. Do they not understand what blogging is or who bloggers are?

Ironic that we found out about these late breaking events this week, because tonight is a big show on The You Served Blog Talk Radio Show. We have a special roundtable panel that will talk about the topic of “The power of the milblogs”. Sitting on this panel will be Susan Keating who blogs at http://susankatzkeating.blogspot.com/, Old Blue who blogs at http://billandbobsadventure.blogspot.com/ and special guest, Task Force Phoenix Afghan Regional Security Integration Command-South Public Affairs Officer, LT Amy Bonnano who writes the Command’s official blog at http://arsicsouth7.wordpress.com/ and will be joining us from Afghanistan. There are some other special guests on tonight’s show also, so please join us on this Thanksgiving week special night show at 7:00 PM EST over on http://www.blogtalkradio.com/youserved

Want another take on this story that is humorous and is written with creativity, check out my good friend, LL’s blog over at http://www.chromedcurses.com/2008/11/25/cry-baby-cry-baby-suck-your-thumb/. Just a heads up, she does not hold back and this blog is not for those that are easily offended.