I got an interesting email today:

Greetings!

My name is Captain Anthony Deiss with U.S. Central Command Public Affairs. I came across your blog today and spent sometime reading. It seems both you and your readers are predisposed to discussing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As a member of the US military I support open discussions of what is happening in the world, no mater from what point of view it comes. I want to provide you and your readers with as much information as possible.

I would like to invite you and your readers to visit the CENTCOM website and use it as another resource in gaining information and news on the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan. Feel free to put our link to the U.S. Central Command website, (http://www.centcom.mil/) on you blog?

Also, if you would like, you can be added to our mailing list. We send out news stories, press releases, etc. as events warrant. This information is also available via RSS on our site. Most of the time we can get CENTCOM information out to bloggers before it appears in the main stream media.

I appreciate your time today and I do look forward to hearing back from you.

V/R

CPT Anthony Deiss

Electronic Media Engagement Officer/Webmaster

US Central Command Public Affairs

Interesting: The U.S. military has people with the job title of "electronic media engagement officer."

And that they say they can get info out to bloggers faster than they do to the mainstream media! Woo-hoo!! :)

I'm actually surprised the guy even found my blog. If you do a Google blogsearch on 'canada afghanistan', I don't show up until the 15th page. But maybe CENTCOM is working down the list from prominent to, er, less prominent. :)

Addendum

U.S. Central Command covers operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to its website, CENTCOM covers the part of the globe between European and Pacific Commands. It covers 27 countries, bounded by Kazakhstan to the north, Pakistan to the east, Kenya to the south, and Egypt and Sudan to the West.

That's got to be one of the hot-seat jobs in the U.S. military. Besides Iraq and Afghanistan, two charter members of the Axis of Evil -- Iran and Syria -- are under CENTCOM's jurisdiction.

Somalia is now an Islamist snakepit. Yemen has a significant al Qaeda presence (that's where the U.S.S. Cole was attacked on Oct. 12, 2000 in the port of Aden). The U.S. maintains a base in Djibouti (as do the French), which is just across the Bab el Mandeb from Yemen. That is the Arabic name for the straits between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

The U.S. bases about 800 special ops troops in Djibouti with a mandate to hunt al Qaeda.