I WAS JUST ON HUGH HEWITT’S SHOW, talking about the dumb Army blogging regulation discussed below.

Bob Krumm observes: “I haven’t yet visited the ‘Netroots’ blogs, but I’m sure that this is being spun as: ‘The Bush Administration is afraid of soldiers being able to report the “truth” about Iraq.’ That angle on this bone-headed Army decision was entirely predictable, and again argues to the public relations obtuseness of the Army.” A quick perusal of Technorati indicates that it’s mostly rightish and military bloggers who are talking about this, but there’s some evidence for Krumm’s suggestion. Just a further reason to think this is indeed a boneheaded move.

On the upside, since this is just an Army regulation, members of other services remain free to blog. If the Marines wind up getting better press because of their milbloggers, perhaps interservice rivalry will do what good sense has not. It wouldn’t be the first time . . . .

UPDATE: Hugh’s suggestion: “Suspend the new policy asap and convene a panel of senior brass and civilians to focus on the blog issue but also on the information war more generally. This pratfall could become the occasion for the Pentagon to ask why we are getting rings run around us in the information war.”

Sadly, one possible explanation is bureaucratic turf protection. Somebody asks “Why are the milblogs doing so much better than our ‘official’ PR efforts?” Response: Shut down the milblogs so nobody will make that comparison in the future!

But, in fact, we are performing very badly in the information war, and there’s no excuse for that at all. As I said on Hugh’s show, there’s been some improvement recently, but it’s been modest, and late to arrive. And this regulation does provide a good opportunity to look into that.

More thoughts here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Patterico thinks that concerns here are overblown, though I fear he’s not paying enough attention to the CYA factor.