Frustration with CENTCOM’s and the military’s ability and willingness to get its message out abounded late last year.

Although I’ll allow that many things get past me, I have noticed bare improvements at best out of CENTCOM since then.

Fortunately, heroic (that IS the right word) onsite milbloggers and others on the ground in Iraq have picked up much of the slack. I would attempt to enumerate them here, but I’m sure I’ll miss many who don’t deserve to be overlooked. Collectively, I believe that they have conferred a degree of balance in the war-related news in two ways.

First, much of what they are reporting would otherwise never have seen the light of day. Second, their presence, along with Old Media’s proven Middle Eastern embarrassments (just a few — fauxtography, the stage-managing Green Helmet Guy, the non-existent Burning Six, the congenitally lying Jamil “Captain Tuttle” Hussein or whoever he really is, the Ramadi airstrikes that weren’t) appear to have served notice to Old Media that the accuracy of their reporters’ and stringers’ dispatches is being monitored, and that attempts at distortion and sensationalism are at least somewhat likely to be exposed.

But a dozen or so milbloggers (if that many) and occasional visitors scraping by on reader donations is not a permanent or complete answer. Getting more visibility for the military’s take on events and developments is.

That is why I’m thrilled to report that Puddle Pirate at Brain Shavings has done something about CENTCOM’s perceived (and probably actual) inattention to this matter himself:

Enough dilly-dallying. I dug around CENTCOM’s site, found 5 feeds, and did their public affairs work for them … and it took me all of 45 minutes.

Those five feeds are now hooked into several search engines and feed-publicizing web services, so whenever CENTCOM posts a new item, everyone will know. Google Blog Search, My Yahoo, Technorati, Bloglines, Apple’s iTunes, Syndic8, FeedBlitz … it’s all covered. You can even subscribe to any feed by e-mail, if you want.

Here are the five feeds:

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

↑ Grab this Headline Animator

Please spread the word far and wide. I’m only one voice.

Make that two — and consider that “spread the word” thing partially done. Hopefully, readers will continue the dissemination.

Still out of reach, if I understand things correctly and read between the lines (not automatic in this circumstance): Google News and Yahoo! News.

Nevertheless — A hearty “Well done, sir” to Puddle Pirate.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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UPDATE: Puddle Pirate just explained the Google New/Yahoo! News situation in an e-mail –

I didn’t even bother contacting Google and Yahoo ….. they’re biased towards the left and therefore hostile to our aims. I thought it better to take action and accomplish 80% of what needs to be done, rather than wait to accomplish 100% and end up losing the contest. The propaganda war’s near another tipping point and we’d be idiots to let the jihadis and the Left go unchallenged.

Hear, Hear.

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Previous Posts:
- Dec. 14, 2006 — Google and Centcom.mil — An Irritating Update
- Dec. 9 — Weekend Question 2: What’s Up with Google News and Centcom.mil’s Access to It?
- Dec. 5 — Google News-Centcom.mil Listing: Open Follow-up Letter
- Dec. 4 — Re Google News and Centcom Inclusion: This Post Is Unintentionally Unresolved
- Nov. 28 — Centcom.mil and Google News: Open Letter to Google News Official and Google Public Relations
- Nov. 28 — Centcom.mil, Google News, and Yahoo! News: Brain Shavings Explains It All (and I Almost Understand It)
- Nov. 27 — Why Is Almost All of Centcom.mil Not Being Picked Up by Google News? (Further Help Needed)

RIP, sir.

UPDATE: Scott Pullins pays tribute.

A travesty of justice (HT Mark at WoMD; also here) turns into another reason to homeschool:

Brenda Nesselroad-Slaby won’t be charged in the death of her 2-year-old daughter, Cecilia Slaby, who was left in a car for eight hours amid searing heat Aug. 23, the Clermont County prosecutor said Tuesday.

Nesselroad-Slaby, 40, forgot she left the sleeping girl strapped in a child seat of a sport utility vehicle at Glen Este Middle School, where she is the assistant principal.

….. Nesselroad-Slaby intends to return to her job at the school, which she has held since 2001, Croswell said. She has been on paid leave pending the prosecutor’s decision.

“I’m sure she’s welcome back,” Croswell said. “I would assume that the school will welcome her back when she is physically and emotionally capable of coming back, which I would hope would be in the short term – for her own well-being and the school’s.”

Union Township police recommended she be charged with child endangering, but the department had no comment on the prosecutor’s decision, Lt. Scott Gaviglia said.

An Enquirer commenter (link may move if the thread allows more comments) caught this important point:

How convenient that Mrs. Slaby was not even minimally charged with child endangerment. Had she been charged and convicted of even that, she would have lost her teaching license but by not charging her at all, she retains her state license to teach.

Hence the emergency deployment of Darth Dilbert’s “Reasons to Homeschool” counter:

Follow-up Question: Anyone think a man in otherwise identical circumstances gets the same breaks?

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On one level, nationalized health care seems so “sensible,” at first:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

Edwards said his mandatory health care plan would cover preventive, chronic and long-term health care. The plan would include mental health care as well as dental and vision coverage for all Americans.

“The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death,” he said.

(Aside: I hear the original draft of Edwards’ speech had “cradle to grave” in it, but that was deemed a bit too obvious.)

Who can be against preventive care? But in a nationalized system, because of rationing, inefficiencies bureaucracy, and opportunistic politicians, the supposedly friendly nanny eventually turns into a caregiving gatekeeper, as this proposal from the leader of the supposedly conservative party in the UK shows:

Failing to follow a healthy lifestyle could lead to free NHS treatment being denied under the Tory plans.

….. heavy smokers, the obese and binge drinkers who were a drain on the NHS could be denied some routine treatments such as hip replacements until they cleaned up their act.

That’s sort of a break in the “continuum of care,” doncha think?

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I have a really bad feeling about this (HT Return of the Conservatives):

At Least 500 Big Dig Leaks Await Repair

BOSTON (AP) - About 500 leaks in Big Dig tunnels are awaiting repair, and that number doesn’t include leaks being handled by the project’s contractors, according to state officials who warn that future leaks are inevitable.

Project manager Michael Lewis also told the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board Tuesday that the leak-repair program is “effective,” and should be viewed separately from new evidence indicating water continues to leak steadily into the Interstate 93 Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. tunnel.

….. Leaks have vexed the $14.798 billion project - the most expensive public works construction in U.S. history - since it buried Boston’s Central Artery in a tunnel system. A large leak into the O’Neill tunnel in September 2004 backed up traffic for miles.

….. Inspectors found between 2,000 and 3,000 leaks in roof-wall joints after the September 2004 incident, Lewis said.

The goal now, he said, is to protect structural steel from corrosion.

Yeah, I’d say that’s a good idea (/sarc).

Has the Sumner Tunnel (completed in 1934) or the Callahan Tunnel (1961) ever had such problems?

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Moderate Muslim Bridge-builder or Terror-Sympathizing Bridge-burner? Patrick Poole has the goods on CAIR-Ohio board member Norma Tarazi here and here.

From the UK Independent — You need to read about 2/3 of the way through the story to get to how lucky this avid ornithologist is to be alive:

Published: 02 September 2007

….. On the first day of the new millennium, he and a friend walked into the Biotopo Cerro Cahui nature reserve, not in search of anything in particular but enjoying the sights they found. “I vividly remember the last bird I saw, a yellow-breasted chat [Icteria virens], a migrant from North America.

“I turned a corner and walked into an ambush by a gang of four masked bandits. I turned around and one shot me. I was lying there on the ground for 45 minutes thinking I was probably going to die.”

Fittingly, perhaps, it was his love of birds that saved his life. Had the bullet passed right through him, he would almost certainly have bled out on the spot. But the shot hit and stopped at the fifth thoracic vertebra. He’s sure that it must have been slowed by passing through his 2in-thick copy of A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America.

He has no way of checking; the book disappeared with his rucksack, watch and rings, taken by the bandits. It took 24 hours to get him out of the jungle and fly him to Houston, Texas, but his recovery after that was remarkably quick. He spent just seven weeks in hospital, compared with months, if not years, for the typical spinal injury patient in Britain. But the attack left him paralysed from the chest down. It’s tempting to say that he’s confined to a wheelchair, but that would be misleading. He has the build, and attitudes, of an outdoorsman, and moves with a grace and independence that I can only envy.

And while his injury might have made expeditions into the wilderness more difficult, they haven’t stopped him. My first glimpse of Butchart was in a photograph of a trip he made two years ago to Cameroon. He’s in a dugout canoe, so narrow that the titanium wheels of his chair are dangling over its sides.  ……

Go here for the full story.