There are hundreds of so-called “”, some amazing, others incomprehensible. They include Air Force computer technicians writing about hardware problems,  Army lawyers describing jogging in the Green Zone and a military nurse sorting pensively meditating on the wounded.she is tending to.

The war in Iraq is undoubtedly a “21^st century” war as the Web has done more than quicken reporting from the battlefield; it has made war interactive!

Wars have often been defined by the new technologies that shaped them. The Civil War was the first photographed conflict in U.S. history, news of World War II was delivered by movie news reels, television made Vietnam the living room war and Desert Storm was the first war broadcast live by satellite. And now, Operation Iraqi Freedom, also know as iWar v1.0.

U.S. soldiers return from battle to their rooms or tents, boot up their laptops and log on to let their friends and family know they’ve made it through another day. If their base is large enough, the Internet service provider offers broadband, and they can make a video call home, watch news reports on the war or post their own versions of life in Iraq to their blogs.

The Internet has become a soldier’s best friend but at the same time is practically impossible to regulate as Al-Qaida militants, conservative bloggers, peace activists, Iraqi civilians and, of course, the U.S. military all use the Internet to distribute their versions of the truth, often engaging in e-mail debates,

The Pentagon has instituted guidelines on blogging and users must be registered with their command, however, some soldiers blog without permission, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, the top military spokesman in Iraq, insists that blogging soldiers need not worry, as long as they follow the same rules as embedded journalists and do not reveal information that could endanger operations or lives.

The Iraq portrayed on the official military Web site is very different from what the soldiers on the ground describe — but that’s the point. No single source can explain what is happening in Iraq. Now that journalists no longer hold a monopoly on news from the front, a smorgasbord of variations of the truth is spread across the Web on the myriad of soldier blogs.