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The Air Force is restricting access to a wide range of blogs its troops will be able to read.

The Air Force Network Operations Center (AFNOC) said," AFNOC has imposed bans on all sites with 'blog' in their URLs, thus cutting off any sites hosted by Blogspot. Other blogs, and sites in general, are blocked based on content reviews performed at the base, command and AFNOC level."

    Gen. David Petraeus

Major Henry Schott, A5 for Air Force Network Operations says the idea is to allow access to "news sources that are primary, official-user sources. "Basically ... if it's a place like The New York Times, an established, reputable media outlet, then it's fairly cut and dry that that's a good source, an authorized source," he said.

While the Air Force says that blogs are not a credible media outlet many do not agree and view blogs as a good source for information and a way to influence opinions domestically and internationally. Gen.David Petraeus who is in charge of the U.S. effort in Iraq has been supportive of military bloggers.

Lt. Gen. William B.Caldwell IV who is the head of the Combined Arms Center wrote in a blog post that soldiers should "get onto blogs and send their YouTube videos to their friends and family," according to Wired.

Retired Air Force Col. Tom Ehrhard who is currently a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments says there are security concerns surrounding blogs. He said, "We are in a different world today when it comes to sensitive military information, and foreign intelligence operatives surely understand this and will exploit it."

"As a former member of Strategic Air Command, where OPSEC was (rightly) an obsession, this has been obvious to me for some time in reading aerospace-oriented blogs. This policy strikes me as a timely reminder to Air Force professionals that they should be on guard when blogging, because someone is watching."