My Interview with Jimmy

Courtney: When were you in Iraq?

Jimmy: From February 2007 to September of the same year.

Courtney: Did you ever post anything, video or pictures, on youtube or myspace or anywhere on the internet while you were over there?

Jimmy: Ya, I posted some pictures on my myspace. And when I came back I put them on my facebook, too. But I never posted video it wasn’t really allowed.

Courtney: What were the rules on that?

Jimmy: Well you could only take pictures inside the wire because you aren’t supposed to take your cameras outside.

Courtney: What’s the wire?

Jimmy: The wire is the perimeter of the base. Going outside the wire is just another way of saying that you are going out of the base. You are going outside of the secure area. You don’t know what could be out there, well you know what’s out there because you aren’t always on base, but you don’t know what could be going on outside of the base. It isn’t a secure area.

It’s also an issue of being aware of your surroundings. Obviously if you are fiddling around with your camera you’re not doing your job and taking in what is going on around you. It’s a safety issue you need to be on your guard, not only for your own safety but for the safety of the guys that you are with as well.

Courtney: So is that why they banned posting video? Because it’s unsafe for you to video tape? Or can you video on the base?

Jimmy: Not exactly. It’s a security thing. People can find anything on the internet. So if you post information on the net, you have to make sure its nothing to specific or else you could put yourself or others in danger. You have to be aware that it isn’t only your friends and family that are seeing the things that you post the enemy or bad guys or whatever you want to call them can see it to.

Like if you tape us doing some type of drill or the routes that we take or anything like that and post it, you are basically giving that information to them. They will know what we are working on, weakness or not, and they can figure out how we will act when put in specific situations and plan accordingly. So just to be on the safe side you just shouldn’t post video because you don’t know what it would reveal to them and you have to be careful with your pictures to.

Courtney: How did they tell you that you couldn’t do it? Was it a sitting down and telling you or is it more of an unspoken agreement?

Jimmy: They were pretty blatant about it.

Courtney: Has it always been like that? Or was there a particular event that fueled them to say you can’t post certain things?

Jimmy: I think that it has always been that way. They don’t want you to give information to people that shouldn’t be privy to it. As for a specific event, I don’t know about that. But there have been tons of kids that posted things that they shouldn’t have and it got people hurt. You aren’t supposed to post specific dates of when you’re doing things. Like you shouldn’t say I’m going to arrive at such and such base on this date or I’m going to leave on this date.

They already know when we are coming and going. It’s weird. They knew when we were arriving. That first day we got mortared or bombed four times in that one day. I was there for seven months and they obviously knew where the base was, but we only got mortared about twelve times in those seven months.

Who’s to say that some one didn’t post the date that we were arriving somewhere and it was read by the wrong people. Its just better if you don’t give specifics, it has the potential to get people hurt or killed.

Courtney: What happens if your superiors find out that you posted something that you weren’t supposed to?

Jimmy: Sorry, I’m not really sure of the consequences. I’m guessing that it would involve counseling with your superiors. Basically they would sit you down for a talk. Or a lot of paperwork detail and stuff like that.

Courtney: So tell me if I’m wrong, but what I gather is that they don’t focus on the consequences of what happens to you personally if you post specific dates or videos. They emphasize the safety concerns of doing so. That it could get you are one of your men killed and that is the reasoning for not having you post secure information.

Jimmy: That was more of the overarching theme. You don’t want to be responsible for getting other people hurt because you posted something online that you didn’t need to.

Synopsis of the rest of the interview:

The interview went on to describe the internet available to the troops. Jimmy explained that on his base the internet was normally available to all the troops at all times, however there was a thirty minute time limit as well as a line at all hours. He also described that they could use the internet like you can in a library, he didn’t noticed any sites being blocked, but he knew that they couldn’t look at pornography or the like.

Another large section of the interview pertained to “River City.” This is what they call the time when the internet and all communication is cut off to the troops. They do this when a soldier has been killed or injured. This enables the government to contact the family of the solider without the fear that they have already found out through the grapevine of communication. These blackouts normally last two to three days but no longer than a week.