Army punishes soldier for blog posts

The U.S. military has demoted and fined a soldier for publishing "classified" information on his personal blog, an Army spokesperson confirmed Tuesday.

Leonard Clark, a 40-year-old Arizona National Guardsman who is currently on active duty in Baghdad, dropped from the rank of specialist to private first class on July 19 and must pay the Army a fine of $820 per month for two months, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.

Flora Lee, a spokesperson at the military's Combined Press Information Center in Iraq, confirmed that an investigation is under way but declined to provide further details on the case.

Clark was charged with violating two articles of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which prohibit soldiers from releasing or "encouraging widespread publication" of classified or specific information about troop movement and location, soldiers who have been attacked or hit, and military strategy, the statement said.

The military has not specified which portions of Clark's blog broke the rules and did not respond to requests for clarification Tuesday about its policy on blogs maintained by personnel.

Word of the soldier's situation has been traversing the blogosphere for weeks. One post at the liberal blog DailyKos lamented Clark's situation and compared selected quotes from Clark's old e-mails about the war in Baghdad with accounts in the mainstream media.

Clark's own site, which describes him as a kindergarten teacher and former Democratic candidate for Arizona governor, is now devoid of content, save for a couple of links to recent media coverage about his plight and a message posted Tuesday by someone identified as a "site admin," which attributes the blogger's recent silence to a gag order.

"He has been asked not to comment, and is doing so," the post said. "Please understand that he is worried about folks back at home smearing his name. When he is done with active duty, the story (from his side) will come out."

Its about time

Its about time they started screwing those who signed up, if you
sing don't expect for the top brass to think that your special.
Hey its a political war, should be interesting to read this 10 year
from now and all the crazy stuff, maybe I will get one history
account of Vietnam and another of Iraq, should be good reading,
buy hey 10 billion dead in combodia and we did nothing, so who
cares just don't call me for any of this.

Its about time

Its about time they started screwing those who signed up, if you
sing don't expect for the top brass to think that your special.
Hey its a political war, should be interesting to read this 10 year
from now and all the crazy stuff, maybe I will get one history
account of Vietnam and another of Iraq, should be good reading,
buy hey 10 billion dead in combodia and we did nothing, so who
cares just don't call me for any of this.

[startiger]

Polotics aside...

He still broke the law. In WW2 he could be be shot as a spy for somthing like that. I would think that someone with the military experance that his guy had would know better than do something like that when he was in the middle of a combat zone. I'm suprised that's all the punishment that they gave him.

Just because he disagrees with the current administration, (He's well within his rights to have an option) does not give him the rigt to post clasified information without retrobution.

My question is if he disagrees so much with the war, what is hs still in the guard? Why didn't he leave befor he was called to active duty?

I do wonder how much of this is just him being sore for being defeated for governer?

[startiger]

Polotics aside...

He still broke the law. In WW2 he could be be shot as a spy for somthing like that. I would think that someone with the military experance that his guy had would know better than do something like that when he was in the middle of a combat zone. I'm suprised that's all the punishment that they gave him.

Just because he disagrees with the current administration, (He's well within his rights to have an option) does not give him the rigt to post clasified information without retrobution.

My question is if he disagrees so much with the war, what is hs still in the guard? Why didn't he leave befor he was called to active duty?

I do wonder how much of this is just him being sore for being defeated for governer?