One of the things that bums me out the most about big media is that there’s so lit­tle room for cor­rec­tions, and for dis­sent­ing voices. Maybe a paper will have a token op-ed colum­nist that doesn’t march in lock-step with its basic direc­tion. Maybe it’ll run an occa­sional high-profile “we blew it” when a story is just com­pletely and absolutely wrong. But, mostly, dis­agree­ments are kept far, far below the water line.
Blogs are dif­fer­ent, of course. The best blog­gers — guys like Andrew Sullivan, for exam­ple — aren’t afraid to lend their online podi­ums to peo­ple who don’t share their views. They’re will­ing to be called idiots and fakes on their home turf.
I admire that. So much so that I’m start­ing a new fea­ture on Defense Tech. Every so often, I’m going to high­light a com­ment, blog entry, or rant that does a really good job at coun­ter­ing an argu­ment of mine — at telling me I’m full of shit. Call it the “F.O.S. Files.”
The first install­ment comes from Will Brown of the Warrior Class Blog. It’s a response to my “Enemy is Me” post, in which I mocked the idea that assem­bling bits of unclas­si­fied infor­ma­tion could some­how cause sol­diers harm.

Discovering specif­i­cally what to learn about, and where that infor­ma­tion is to be found, is a much greater chal­lenge then Mr. Shachtman is appar­ently will­ing to con­sider. Google and other on-line search engines are invalu­able intel­li­gence gath­er­ing tools that are avail­able to any­one with the tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­ity to access them. Even so, they present the same stum­bling block as do dic­tio­nar­ies famil­iar to any third grader; you have to know where to look, how to spell the word in the first place, in order to look it up at all. It is in this regard that Mr. Shachtmans protes­ta­tions fall flat. By pro­vid­ing the enemy with informed inspi­ra­tion to guide infor­ma­tion searchs [sic], such con­cerns as he dis­misses give vital start­ing guid­ance to enemy research into devel­op­ing counter-measures.

Now, Brown goes on to make some less-smart accu­sa­tions. He implies, for instance, that the rea­son I’m defend­ing the right to round up unclas­si­fied infor­ma­tion is so I can main­tain “a viable eco­nomic strat­egy” for myself. (Trust me, there are eas­ier ways to make a buck.) But, still, the man’s basic counter-argument is solid. Im look­ing for­ward to the next F.O.S. file.