Seventy-five journalists from around the nation have formed an infantry company and they\u2019re volunteering their service to the country in the war in Afghanistan. They plan on leaving for the war next week after nearly a week of training in the parking lot outside of The Military Times in Arlington, Virginia. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re tired of being told by milbloggers that we\u2019re just spectators in the war against terror,” declared Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post. \u201cI told milbloggers at their little conference this Spring that their time has passed and that journalists have been at this war for more than ten years and we know as much about combat as they know. Now we\u2019re going to prove it!\u201d<\/p>\n
The company commander, Tobias Naegele<\/a>, who is also the senior editor at Military Times, said \u201cThose milbloggers are just out-of-control these days. I\u2019ve tried to get some of them fired but they don\u2019t seem to work for anybody. So we\u2019ve taken it upon ourselves to put them in their place. I\u2019ve been a senior editor of the Military Times for 18 years, that has to count for something.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s really messed up,\u201d continues Naegele, \u201cIs that the milbloggers blame us<\/a> for them having to do our job for us. It\u2019s hardly our fault that we have to primp and preen most of the time and show up in our offices almost every day. Most of them are just sitting around their living rooms in their underwear. They have no fancy parties to attend, and they mostly get their product from us. All they do is punch up our stories with the research we\u2019re too lazy to do. Sure we steal their content without giving them any credit, that\u2019s their fault for being an open source. So who is really the bad guy here?\u201d<\/p>\n Another Washington Post reporter, Thomas Ricks<\/a>, explained that he was going to Afghanistan to prove that anyone can do it, so that he can confidently claim that veterans don\u2019t deserve a 20-year-retirment. \u201cI\u2019ve been advocating for years that twenty years in the military is a breeze and not deserving of such a brief service period to qualify for retirement. Now I get my chance\u201d, said the 57-year-old SAW gunner, obviously straining under the weight of his 300 rounds of ammunition and the 17 pound weapon.<\/p>\n Los Angeles Times editor, Davan Mahara<\/a>, who famously released the \u201catrocity pictures\u201d of US soldiers posing with dead bodies of suicide bombers told us that they\u2019ve been training day and night in preparation for their anticipated deployment next week. \u201cI used to go out to veterans\u2019 cemeteries at night and urinate on the graves all by myself, now I go out with my peeps so we can get a real feel for what the troops are doing in Afghanistan. And we can call it \u201crealistic training\u201d. The camaraderie is infectious. Last night, when we finished training, I went home and tore all of the shrubbery out of my yard like a real Special Forces soldier<\/a>.<\/p>\n