Welcome...and initial guidelines...

This blog will be used in the spring of 2008 by 80+ students at Drexel University to investigate the effects of Iraq on culture and the reverse. Our goal will be to better understand why the US is in Iraq, and to question whether literature can help us on this journey.

Weekly plans and other materials will always be posted in Vista, not this blog. So go to Bb Vista to get the discussion prompts and other instructions.

I intend this blog to manage our discussions and track our collective investigation.

You should have received an email from me inviting you to become a contributor to this blog. The email was sent Monday afternoon to your official Drexel email address.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

For the People, by the People

Upon looking over Command-Post.org, I was confused as to what purpose this blog served. When the site first loaded, I was wondering whether or not the site was, indeed, a blog. However, when I first read the initial message at the top of the page, I was quickly informed as to why the page looks so odd. The Command Post is simply a collection of web blogs recorded over recent years surrounding the current war.
     According to the presumed owners of the site (who go by the name of Alan and Michele), they believe that this site serves no purpose anymore as the internet has seen a substantial influx of other similar blogs over the years. As a result, Alan and Michele have decided to close the site and simply use it as an archive of blogs that people can gain access to. Simply put, The Command Post represents a piece of journalistic history.
     In the opening message, the assumed tag-line of the site seems to be "For the people, by the people." Thus, I got the vibe that the entire site is not written by one such person, but by a group of people who represent the general public in trying to represent multifaceted views on ideas. Upon  further speculation, I discovered that, there are, indeed, approximately 13 contributers to the entire blog.
     However, I wanted to make sure that my assumption proved to be true when I previously assumed that the individual blogs represent multifaceted political views. Thus, I dabbled into some journalism. Once perused, I found most of the articles to be simply informative with little to no personal emphasis or input. On specific topic of blogs I read, entitled "Global War on Terror," seemed to display this quality to a "T." It seemed as if every blog post (usually posted by a contributer under the name of California Yankee") was pulled directly from the news source itself. Thus, I came to the conclusion that this collection of blogs simply serves a historic piece of archived news events.
 

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