I never expected to write this: One of the best milblogs out there was launched by "Doonesbury," the comic strip that has mocked American politics for more than three decades--usually reserving its sharpest barbs for the right. The Doonesbury milblog, the Sandbox, was launched on Oct. 8 via an announcement by "Ray Hightower," a fictional noncommissioned officer who is dispatched to Iraq and observes that "the public feels increasingly disconnected from the troops in the field" and that the strip would chip in by launching a "command-wide milblog."

The Sandbox suffers from its somewhat pretentious self-description as "GWOT hot wash, straight from the wire" and reassurance to contributors that "all content, no matter how robust, is currently secured by the First Amendment." But the blog is excellent and probably serves as the best one-stop shopping option for most readers who are interested in sampling opinion from the field on a daily basis without having to wade through the morass of milblogs.

The basic structure is simple: Milbloggers submit posts to the Sandbox, two to four of which are selected each day, receive a light editor's touch and are posted online. Because the site is hosted by Doonesbury.com, it does not suffer the financial constraints that cause some of the larger blogs to cover their pages with advertisements nor the austere, amateurish formatting that hinders the readability of many sites.

Most important, the content has, so far, covered the gamut of issues that emerge from the war: harrowing combat experience, amusing anecdotes of life on the forward operating base, ruminations on the meaning of life in combat and fascinating observations on the lives of the Afghans, Iraqis and Gulf Arabs that U.S. troops interact with.

The tone of the posts ranges from mission-oriented confidence to confessions of frustration and fear. One of the best descriptions of going outside the wire that I have read is posted by an Air Force captain:

I feel very much like the guys probably did in WWII who flew on bomber missions. They were safe at the home bases, but when they set out on their mission they were vulnerable. Whether they found their target or not. . .they still had to make the trip, and it was the trip that was so dangerous. We form up each morning, hoping that if there is an emergency our cell phones will actually work. Fifteen men looking a bit grimmer each day, fully armored up, bristling with weapons, knowing full well that if a bomb hits us, there won't be anyone to shoot at. There never is. . . . But unlike the bomber crews, we don't get to stop at 25 or 50 missions. . . . We just keep flying missions until they let us go home.

The apparent success of the site indicates the value of linking milblogs to the mainstream media. It first allows milblogs to overcome the inherent limitations of their format. Almost all milblogs are aimed at a miniscule audience--the friends and family members of individual troops. In contrast, the most widely read milblogs tend to be targeted either at a military audience or are so deeply invested in a political position on the war that the editorial voice dominates the content.

The Sandbox simultaneously serves as a medium to deliver milblogs to a larger readership than would otherwise find them and also effectively depoliticizes them.

Just as important as overcoming the deficits of the milblogosphere, the Sandbox is also an excellent example of how cooperation with blogs can fill the vast gaps in reporting from Iraq, as the mainstream media is almost completely divorced from the troops in the field.

In September, Pajamas Media, a blogging news outfit, reported there were only nine embedded reporters in Iraq. Milblogger Michael Yon did some additional digging and discovered that of those nine, "three were from Stars and Stripes, one from the Armed Forces Network, another from a Polish radio station who was with Polish forces, and one Italian reporter embedded with his country's troops." And then only two of the remaining three were American reporters who were writing regularly on combat in Iraq; the third was researching a book.

But if the milbloggers are going to pick up slack left by the absence of U.S. media throughout Iraq, surely the military is supporting their efforts? Apparently, not so much. In his article published in The Weekly Standard, Yon reports that when he recently attempted to embed with the Army in Iraq, he was rejected outright by the commander of the Combined Press Information Center: "I do not recognize your web site as a media organization that we will use as a source to credential journalists covering [Multi-National Forces-Iraq] operations," Lt. Col. Barry Johnson wrote to Yon.

Yon is one of the best known milbloggers: He spent nine months with 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment, in 2005 as an embedded reporter before requesting to return this year, and he snapped compelling images of the war. That his request should be turned down, especially on such spurious grounds, is disgraceful.

And while military press officers allow the Army's relations with civilian milbloggers to deteriorate, the Defense Department is strengthening its regulations against uniformed milblogging. The latest iteration of Army Regulation 25-1, which covers technology management and security, prohibits the use of military resources to maintain a personal Web site. Needless to say, almost all blogging from in theater falls into that category. This dilemma was brought up on the popular blog Tanker Brothers--where now that both of the tankers are about to be deployed in Iraq, they have decided the regulation requires the site to "go into hibernation for a while." "Master Gunner" offers a clear summation of the Pentagon's response to milblogging:

Instead of embracing the movement, instead of helping MilBloggers fight the [information operations] war [at] home and abroad, using their own words and their own experiences, the powers that be have decided instead to put up as many roadblocks as possible to silence the movement. Many can [cite] First Amendment protections to try and keep the movement alive, but let's be honest. As a Soldier, I'm here "to defend Democracy, not practice it."

Moreover, the same regulation established a Web Risk Assessment Cell, a small unit that will monitor milblogging and other Internet-related activities to make sure troops do not inadvertently release classified or exploitable information. The Defense Department's efforts address real liabilities--some online authors have provided detailed critiques of their own force-protection abilities--but they also risk undermining a genuine grass-roots movement within the military. Although this and other changes are new and only recently coming into force, anecdotal evidence indicates that ever-larger numbers of milbloggers are choosing to close their Web sites rather than risk disciplinary action, or just the additional scrutiny maintaining the sites draws.

The contretemps during Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's tenure, the blowback that the midterm election demonstrated against the Republican Party and the growing sense of national pessimism all point in the same direction: Although this war will be fought in the Middle East, the center of American gravity is on the homefront.

Many milbloggers are obviously engaged in a vital national service abroad, but individually, they have at least as much to contribute to winning the war at home. It would be tragic if even while new forums such as the Sandbox are appearing to link Americans to their troops, the Defense Department endeavors to sever those ties.

Christopher Griffin is a research associate at AEI.