The Iraq war and the electronic trenches

• VIDEO: Adrienne Arsenault reports on the battle over bandwidth in Iraq (Runs 10:23)

The former commander of ground troops for Britain in the first Gulf War is trying to be polite.

Long retired, Major Gen. Patrick Cordingly is sitting in front of a computer screen and wincing noticeably. "Oh my, it's not pleasant viewing is it?" He pauses. "Remarkable."

What he's looking at is a collection of videos posted on the internet by U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

It includes the now typical array of cellphone images of explosions and shouting, of young men, fuelled by adrenalin, swearing and laughing in almost every excerpt. There are also images of animal abuse by soldiers.

In one posting, bored infantrymen wire up a live turkey with explosives. Then, to a soundtrack of hard rock, they chase it and blow it up. This is their Thanksgiving Day homage.

There's more and much of it is hard to watch. These aren't Abu Ghraib torture scenes that today's soldier's are posting on the net, but they probably aren't going to help win wavering hearts and minds.

The world has changed since Cordingly wore his uniform. Back then, soldiers didn't carry cellphone cameras in their pocket. His troops — his Desert Rats, as they were called — who did have access to phones found they couldn't get signals. In 1990-91, electronic communications from bases were infrequent and tightly controlled.

Cordingly simply didn't have to worry much about what his soldiers were sending back home. He certainly didn't have to worry about them watching Juba on their laptops.

Missed me

Juba might be called the Bogeyman of Baghdad. He's a star of the insurgent videos, a sniper who likes to boast electronically of his accomplishments.

Probably, Juba is a compilation of many snipers. His targeting and shooting of U.S. soldiers is meticulously and melodramatically recorded on camera. Each propaganda posting is accompanied by swelling music, elaborate graphics and enough footage of soldiers crumpling to the ground to send the signal that Juba is watching and waiting.

There's no question U.S. troops are also watching Juba, on the net, from their Iraqi bases. Some are even posting video replies — images of helmets with bullet holes in them, a retaliatory "You didn't get me, I'm still here" taunt.

This is the modern equivalent of First World War soldiers barking threats at each other across the trenches.

"It's extraordinary," remarks Cordingly. "It's like pawns on a chessboard playing each other." But he's torn by what he sees.

Like many people, he marvels at how technology has changed the way we can view war, up close and, sometimes, way too personal.

But he's worried too. What's the effect of all this raw emotion and stark imagery that is being transmitted almost instantly to families back home? How might this affect public perception, and public support of the war effort? And importantly, how does logging on and watching, over and over again, your buddies fall to a sniper's bullet affect a soldier in the field?

Cordingly's assessment: "You're going to be more aggressive the next time you're on patrol. You are likely to get people saying this is for Bob or Joe and that's the worrying aspect. That is precisely what you need to make sure doesn't happen."

As a commander, he adds, "I would have liked to make sure no one had access to (internet postings). But you can't go backwards."

Bullets and bandwith

He's probably right about that. But that doesn't mean the brass can't try. In fact, the Pentagon has just imposed new restrictions on its soldiers in theatre. It's now forbidding them from using military servers to access at least a dozen popular file-sharing sites, including YouTube and MySpace.

It's also imposed strict new rules on blogging. This will indeed limit what soldiers can see and send.

The Pentagon insists this is all about security. It doesn't want operations jeopardized. And it's concerned that all the uploading and downloading of imagery will slow or crash military servers. It is adamant it's not doing this for censorship reasons.

"The whole thing's a rotten idea." That was the immediate response of Spc. Colby Buzzell. He's a skateboarder turned gunner on leave now from serving in Iraq.

Buzzell was one of the first to have his own blog from the war in Iraq — milbloggers they're called — and his postings became an award-winning book entitled My War: Killing Time in Iraq.

He now joins the ranks of those who don't buy the Pentagon's argument and think the military planners are simply panicking.

"They are blaming it on bandwidth and operational security." But the real reason, he suggests, is so military commanders "can control what kind of information gets released back home."

His take, though, is that "I don't think it will permanently shut bloggers or video-posters down. I think a lot of soldiers will find a way to get around the policy." And he's probably right.

Already, some military personnel are simply waiting until they get home to post their Iraq compilations. Others know that the Pentagon ban hasn't cast a wide enough net. There are still many internet-sharing sites that are still popular and still accessible from military servers.

Certainly the Juba videos make it through somehow.

There has been no war as wired as this one and no soldiers as free as today's to talk about how they feel and what they see and do almost as soon as it's happened.

The internet was originally conceived by military planners but even military use of it has slipped from their control. Once again, Iraq has changed everything.