Military Doctor Closes Online War Diary

The Army has ordered a blogger to shut down his website!

www.67cshdocs.com, a website written by a military doctor in Iraq that chronicled the bloody aftermath of the suicide bombing of a mess tent in Iraq has been shut down. Here's what he says on his last posting:

I have some very unfortunate news. Levels above me have ordered, yes ORDERED, me to shut down this website.  They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I certainly disagree with this. However, I have made a decision to turn off the site pending further investigation as to whether or not I have violated these Army Regulations.

Here's an excerpt from his diary (because you can't read it on-line anymore):

Around midday I heard a report on the radio, something I will not soon forget: "The DFAC (dining facility) on Marez just took a direct hit. No report of injuries or number of casualties."

... Two trucks and 2 Stryker vehicles pulled up and the mass chaos began. Each vehicle carried at least 3 casualties and on initial assessment, most seemed seriously injured. The situation quickly became overwhelming... . We were doing our best to triage... but they were arriving too quickly... . We did not have enough rickshaws or stands so we were putting the litters on the floor and treating patients there. While this was going on, more patients were accumulating outside.

... Just about every medic on our FOB [forward operating base] and on Marez showed up to help... . People were coming out of the woodwork. There were docs showing up as well. A Turkish physician who works with a local subcontractor showed up to help out. Earlier in the day a Republic of Korea (ROK) physician brought a ROK soldier in with pericarditis. Now the ROK physician was helping out. The Albanian commando physician stopped by to help out.

... We had just started to get a good grasp of who needed to be transferred and where the patients were located when there was a large boom. Sounded like a mortar. Boom. Another mortar, a little closer. Boom. Yet another, sounding even closer. The fourth boom landed on the roof of the hospital.

... By definition a mass casualty situation is when the number of patients and their injuries exceed the available resources. This was the mass casualty of all mass casualties.

More on the story can be found here.

UPDATE

Here's a piece from late December (yes, just a few weeks ago) in the Philadelphia Inquirer about Michael Cohen and his blog.