Daniel And The Lions

Via Matt at Tattered Coat and misty guesting at Shakespeare's Sister comes the tawdry story of Emerald City clampdown on a milblogger's free speech. Daniel Goetz has for some time been a great blogger, telling it like it is about Iraq. No longer. The cowardly lions of Oz have decreed it.

Matt tells the tale:

Daniel has been silenced, against his will. And not only has he been silenced — he has been forced to publicly declare himself “a supporter of the administration and of her policies.”

A stop-lossed soldier angry that he is still serving in Iraq, seven months beyond his original enlistment agreement, Daniel is no longer free to post on his blog. Though he had taken care to adhere to the code of conduct to which he is bound, it is likely that a post of his on the Operation Truth website brought his views to the attention of military officials.

Daniel’s final post is heart-breaking; the single most chilling thing about it, if you know your Orwell, is its title: Double Plus Ungood.

Daniel's final post is eloquent in what it does not say:

I thank all of you who have been so supportive recently. I have never before received so much positive feedback, and it was very heart-warming to know that so many people out there care. Having said that, it breaks my heart to say that this will be my last post on this blog. I wish I could just stop there, but I can not. The following also needs to be said:

For the record, I am officially a supporter of the administration and of her policies. I am a proponent for the war against terror and I believe in the mission in Iraq. I understand my role in that mission, and I accept it. I understand that I signed the contract which makes stop loss legal, and I retract any statements I made in the past that contradict this one. Furthermore, I have the utmost confidence in the leadership of my chain of command, including (but not limited to) the president George Bush and the honorable secretary of defense Rumsfeld. If I have ever written anything on this site or on others that lead the reader to believe otherwise, please consider this a full and complete retraction.

I apologize for any misunderstandings that might understandably arise from this. Should you continue to have questions, please feel free to contact me through e-mail. I promise to respond personally to each, but it may take some time; my internet access has become restricted.

That sucks! There's no way you could read Daniel's work and believe the BS they made him write in this post. Its a huge pity his work for OpTruth seems to have brought this about - OpTruth are probably the most effective advocates Stateside that the common soldiers have and deserve our support.

You may want to check out Daniel's platoon-mate, Zachary Scott-Singley who writes the A Soldier's Thoughts blog.

Here he is on Sept. 28th:

Iraq is the new frontier of poor foreign policy and poor planning. Even the soldiers can see it. Why do you think nobody is re-enlisting? They don't want to keep leaving their families to go fight a loosing battle and to die for an empty promise. The promise that somehow staying in Iraq makes America safer.

We have created a martyr factory here, and we are beginning to wade through the next Vietnam. How wrong do you want to be before you close down shop and send the troops home? 2,000 dead? Is that wrong enough? How about 10,000?

I've mentioned Zachary before. Give him some traffic and ask him to tell Daniel "nil illegitium carrborandum" - don't let the bastards grind you down!