Battle bloggers
Chicago area man collects e-dispatches from the front in new book
Matthew Currier Burden has a Web site he says gets 15,000 hits a day.
He looks forward to the day he can shut it down.
"I'd love nothing more than to not have to do it anymore,'' said Burden. For that would mean, the Chicago area man said, that "no more of my friends will be dying.''
Burden calls it "an oral history of the people involved."
A 39-year-old Ravenswood native who now lives in a western suburb with his wife and two children, Burden started Blackfive -- a military moniker for a unit's second in command -- in 2003. It was launched after a friend of Burden's was killed in Iraq.
"I got angry and decided to write stories about people you wouldn't normally hear about in the media,'' said Burden, now a civilian who works in information technology for a downtown firm.
Soon, he was getting e-mails from soldiers in the field, which Burden began adding to the site.
Some of those front-line observations, as well as dispatches Burden collected from other similar soldier-authored "milblogs,'' have been included in his critically acclaimed new book, The Blog of War (Simon & Schuster.)
The blog, and the book, mostly reflect support for the war in Iraq. However, "if there's somebody who is critical of the administration, but it's a well thought-out piece, I put it up'' on the site, he said.Burden, who joined the Army at 17 and retired as a major in the Army Reserve in July of 2001, supports sending more troops to Iraq.
"If we imbed troops with the local police and local army, I think it'll give us a chance,'' Burden said. "I think most soldiers realize if we leave, people are going to die."
Burden, who worked in military intelligence, said war takes a toll on those in uniform.
"Nobody wants peace more than soldiers -- they're the ones who have to go and fight and die,'' he said. "But in the long run, we really need to make an effort to win this war. I wouldn't be surprised, if we leave, we'll end up back in Iraq. And I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of people die in the process.''
This war has given birth to hundreds of blogs written by soldiers with access to computers in the field. The development has made some officials nervous.
The Army has warned soldiers that posting details on the web may inadvertently reveal "vulnerabilities and tactics" and could "needlessly place lives at risk.'' Soldiers who run such sites from Iraq and Afghanistan are required to register them with their command and the Pentagon reportedly has stepped up monitoring of milblogs.
On one, an Arizona National Guardsman described one superior as "an inhuman monster" and talked of growing unrest among American soldiers. The blogger was busted down one rank and fined $1,640 for what military officials said was releasing classified information about troop movement, according to a 2005 Army Times report.
