OIF 06-08.2
The Few, The Proud, The Bloggers
Source: Terminal Lance, 29 January 2010
For the Marine Corps, the Global War on Terror coincided with the rise of social media, also known as Web 2.0. While many senior military leaders saw this as a threat — the rapid spread of the Abu Ghraib pictures, the puppy tossing incident, and the Scout Sniper urination videos, seemed to confirm their worst fears — it also gave Marines a soapbox that they wouldn’t have had even a decade ago. The Marine Corps maintained a formal ban on social media until late 2009, calling it “a larger attack and exploitation window, [which] exposes unnecessary information to adversaries and provides an easy conduit for information leakage,” but saw that ban overturned by the DOD in early 2010. Read more
31 December 2007: Kilo-3-3 IED Find
Kilo-3 3rd Squad found an neutralized an IED. The location may have been Route Mets. — Source: Justin Palmer, Kilo Company Read more
5 December 2007: India-3 Weapons Cache in Rafush
“1st and 2nd squad with India Co. 3rd platoon found a massive Cache in Rafush (misspelled) that the [Iraqi Police] were hiding. On our patrols we discovered it. We secured the area, and waited forever for EOD to show. 1st, 2nd, and 3rd squad participated.” — Source: Michael Montague, India Company
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10 November 2007: 232nd Marine Corps Birthday
5 October 2007: Attack on the Iraqi Police Station
On October 5 Lima Company at the Iraqi Police Station in Karmah came under a complex attack from multiple directions. Marines and Iraqi police returned fire. Due to low light conditions, illumination and close air support (CAS) was called in. After twenty minutes the enemy fled. One hour later, a CAS mission from HMLA-369 reported receiving fire from two hostile vehicles to the east of Karmah. HMLA conducted a CAS mission and destroyed the two vehicles. Read more