MilBlogs Ready to Inform

MBRI's have been a growing, and important, community of the Blogosphere since the Liberation of Afghanistan and Iraq began, and it's important, this Memorial Day, that I finally add a Blogroll of them to the sidebar.

This Memorial Weekend post is dedicated to all the men, and women, of our armed services, and their families.

Will everyone please rise for the playing of our Star Spangled Banner ( Read along as you listen ):

Oh! say, can you see, by the dawn's early light,

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?

Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,

O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming?

And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air,

Gave proof thro' the night that our flag was still there.

Oh! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave,

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen thro' the mist of the deep,

Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,

What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep.

As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?

Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,

In full glory reflected, now shines on the stream

'Tis the star-spangled banner. Oh! long may it wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

And where is that band who so vauntingly swore

That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion

A home and a country should leave us no more?

Their blood has washed out their foul footstep's pollution.

No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave,

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand

Between their loved homes and the war's desolation,

Blest with victory and peace, may the Heaven - rescued land

Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.

Then conquer we must, for our cause is just,

And this be our motto --"In God is our trust."

And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave

O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Bet you had forgot, if you ever knew, that there are 4 Stanzas to the poem. ;-D

And now a word from El Rushbo, from behind the Mighty Golden EIB Microphone.

Before we move on to the stars of our Post a Father, and a Pundit, provide some much needed perspective, and I provide a poem.

As this post explains there are many reasons for MilBlogs to have appeared:

Most simply want to tell the story of their war. But by design or happenstance, in doing so they've written their part of the history of these times, documenting a war that many feel the traditional media has failed to capture, denying others the opportunity to speak falsely "for the troops" without concern of being exposed.

None of that has come without controversy.

As the military struggles with the idea of open and instant communication from the battlefield the number of milbloggers choosing to shut down their sites is growing almost as swiftly as the number of those starting new ones. As might be expected, the Army's scrutiny of the bloggers in their midst has resulted in attention to them from other sources - media coverage of milblogs has exploded worldwide.

As has been shown over, and over again, some of the best, and most accurate reporting on the events on the ground, and at home, has come from these Blogs.

Some of the most thought provoking, honest, hearfelt, and emotional writing as well.

Let's begin 1st, however, by remembering the fallen, and just what this day means, and by paying tribute to one of the greatest War Correspondents to ever live, and one that far too few of the current crop will ever live up to:

As a boy of four in ’44 I missed out on his style;

But at thirty-six in ’76 I learned more of Ernie Pyle.

To read his tributes to our troops always brought the question why,

That my own war’s correspondents didn’t hold our troops as high.

I’d witnessed acts of bravery as great as World War Two,

But press accounts of those same acts were seldom, they were few;

More likely to be displayed in morning print or evening news,

Were American acts of cruelty to prop up protestors’ views.

Read the rest of Just One Old Ernie Pyle by Russ Vaughn, over at The American Thinker.

( A Tip of the Hat to, Blackfive, and to MilBlogs, MilBlogs. )