Q: You have asked U.S. soldiers to emulate Winston Churchill and act as war correspondents by sending you dispatches from the front. What has been the response?
Hackworth: Very, very favorable. The soldiers know the traffic is being monitored by the Pentagon, that Big Brother is monitoring everything they write....I very seldom get direct sources -- remember before we deployed, they [soldiers] were at home and could send e-mail from personal Yahoo accounts, now they have to use military accounts and are paranoid that these are being read. The [direct] traffic I get now are from guys who don't give a fuck, who are not going to stay in [the military], who don't give a shit about the consequences of sounding off. But remember -- you can never outsmart a convict in prison or a soldier on the battlefield. They both live by their wits, so what they do is write home and say "Hey dad I love you, we are having a few problems with tanks, etc. If this letter should happen to find itself into the e-mail of Hackworth at www.Hackworth.com it wouldn't disappoint me." I am getting 30 to 40 of these letters.
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