Monday, June 14, 2010

OPSEC, Michael Yon and STFU

Uncle Jimbo at BLACKFIVE has yet another piece up concerning Michael Yon.

Please go read it, but for those of you who don't Yon received an email from a troop in Afghanistan who completely violated OPSEC by telling Yon all of the flaws in the security at the FOB where he is posted. Yon, rather than informing the chain of command, goes and posts it for the world to see on his HIGHLY-TRAFFICKED website and Facebook pages.

Now, for whatever reason, OPSEC tightened. Did Yon's post have anything to do with that? Who knows? But the truth is that this might embolden other troops out there to attempt the same thing. Or worse. And eventually this is going to bite us in the ass.

I’ve got personal ties to both fronts of this war, but OPSEC doesn’t only matter when someone you know has their neck on the live. It should always matter.

The soldier out there in the sand knows better and Yon should damn well know better too. Yon continually beats up McChrystal and Army PAOs for being kicked off embeds. Well, after publishing crap like this it doesn’t surprise me one little bit. Hopefully Yon never finds his way back onto the battle field. Dude went from being one of the greatest voices for our forces in the war to being a huge liability.

4 comments:

Maggie Goff said...

The email was actually from Uncle J at Blackfive. It showed that Yon just publishes anything that will make GEN McCrystal look bad, without fact checking. It appears that Yon is trying to spite GEN McCrystal. I have totally lost respect for him. He still has not acknowledged that the email was from Uncle J, but is taking credit for the "fixes". He's really jumped the shark.

Maggie Goff said...

Here's the link for the previous comment:

http://www.blackfive.net/main/2010/06/michael-yon-the-end-game.html

Cullen said...

I got the impression that the first post was a legitimate issue of a soldier breaking OPSEC and that UJ was testing Yon on the second post. Could be wrong, I guess.

Andy said...

Yeah Cullen. I know you've posted about Yon before. Man, what a shame. We've discussed "fatigue," but I think it's something deeper.

Grudges really screw people up, huh?

BTW: Hope you're enjoying the family.