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A BBC report yesterday said that the US government is monitoring blogs, YouTube and MySpace to keep an eye on what its soldiers are posting online, especially when it comes to video.

While the BBC article sounds a little Aunty-ish in its revelation that some of the clips include "foul language" (like fighting men swearing is going to be a surprise) a quick search on YouTube for the most recent clips added with the tag Iraq includes a range of soldier generated content, as it were.

These range from home-made rap video Lazy in Ramadi to what I think is the "Hostile Demise" sequence mentioned in the BBC report where the order "smoke ’em," comes  following a confirmed sighting via night vision of three men concealing what appears to be a rocket-propelled grenade launcher in a field. The gunner then shoots each in turn, lingering on the final target until he is sure where he is – hiding underneath a truck.

Also featured – posted in December – is one of a sequence of videos claiming to by or of Blackwater security contractors (mercenaries in old-speak) engaged in fighting. "Fuckin’ niggers" shouts one soldier during a pause in a firefight. Later in the same video, Black Water in Najaf, he shows us the back of a pick-up truck loaded with Iraqi prisoners wearing hoods and plastic cuffs – the kind we don’t see that often on our newspaper frontpages anymore. We hear them weeping.

The comments section for the clip has a lively debate, but mostly around the use of the racial slur and Blackwater contractors’ pay vs. those of ordinary soldiers.

In another video a Blackwater sniper is filmed commentating on his work, including the phrase "It’s like a Turkey shoot," and "Looks like it’s going to be a long day."

YouTube and other online networks are packed with videos from both sides in many current conflicts – from Israeli footage of Hezbollah rocket launches to Al Qaeda propaganda videos.

For all the talk by the Pentagon of monitoring it is hard to imagine them really being able to suppress troops’ videos – perhaps the frontline of the information war is to wide and too porous for censorship to be really effective anymore.

Tags: video, youtube, network_journalism, propaganda, military