Before now poetry has taken notice
Of wars, and what are wars but politics
Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody?
from "Build Soil"
Robert Frost

Saturday, June 28, 2008

And another one's gone... another one's gone... another one bites the dust


The recently milblog-famous LT G is now assured of a book deal, and the milblog-reading public is now deprived of an erudite inside look into the current prosecution of the ground war in Iraq. No long tails, no FOB life, no ice cream cones- Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal was exactly that- a blog of US soldiers at war. I'll take my "proud father" moment here- I found his blog just a few days after the Gravediggers hit the Iraqi dirt; a few days after I had mourned the lack of quality milblogs currently "on the ground".


The Only Difference Between Martyrdom and Suicide is Press Coverage


That was the post (of prescient title) that did him in. A too-real look at the struggle of a combat lieutenant to stay out of the mind-draining quagmire. No, not the media's Iraq: that quagmire is contrived and belied by the situation on the ground. This quagmire was the grind of the Tactical Operations Center, of the FOB life. LT G did not want to be a company executive officer. For a combat troop, that would be as good as suicide. The post he wrote about it got his blogging canned. Martyrs get books. Ask Colby Buzzell (who got called out of the inactive reserve for another Iraq deployment, by the way. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.)

It's too bad. I'll miss reading Kaboom.

11 comments:

  1. So, BureauSEC is even touchier than OPSEC! Who knew? Who didn't?

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  2. Anonymous29/6/08 08:17

    dude-
    i really appreciate all the support, from beginning to end. Like i said, all this e-drama is on me, but your take on things helped remind me why I posted in the first place. I hope all is well with you and yours, hasta

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  3. I'm gonna miss him too. After all you're the one who turned me on to his blog. Thank you for that. I think both of you have been the most eloquent of the milbloggers I've read.

    Leanne

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  4. I will miss Kaboom. I will miss his stories of Anu Al Verona and all the characters.

    If you run across any new and great milblogs, send them my way. I'm constantly looking for such blogs as Kabooms's.

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  5. Hey TD, good to hear from you. I'm going to miss LT G as well. Kaboom was an excellent blog.

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  6. Well shut my mouth. LT G has been promoted to CAPT G and he's still with the Gravediggers.

    His fiance has taken the reins at Kaboom.

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  7. What a shame ...
    I wonder if we'll ever learn the "real deal" with shutting him down.
    Lt G was certainly a good representative for all serving.
    It's just too damn bad .......

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  8. A couple of quick things:

    First, don't know if you know it or care, but you're on the blogroll over at the academic journal, War, Literature & the Arts.

    Second, this post lacks a title, and therefore, a detectable permalink, so the current post over at WLA links to your homepage and points readers to 29 Jun.

    Lastly, the blog entry you credit as being Lt G's undoing no longer exists (subject to that order to delete everything, I suspect); however, Google, God bless 'em, still has a cached version here. I'd love for you to update your link, since the WLA post is linked to you, as I didn't feel quite safe posting CPT G's cached page that was ordered removed by one military branch on a blog site published by another military branch. I'd prefer not to join the good CPT in blogger Alcatraz. ;-)

    Keep up the good work! Doc

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  9. Doc, thanks so much for putting up the link to the Google cached copy of Kaboom. I knew it had to be there from what I've read but I couldn't figure out how to find it.

    Take care.

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  10. Anonymous1/8/08 06:55

    Yep, Kaboom is rullezz.Thnx!

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  11. Anonymous16/1/09 01:46

    This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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