US soldiers in Iraq reacted with dismay yesterday after the Pentagon blocked their access to websites including YouTube and MySpace, used widely to send and receive messages and pictures to loved ones at home.

The Pentagon told The Times that the decision had been made for security issues – to protect sensitive information being seen by the enemy – and to reduce drag on the military’s bandwidth. Soldiers said that the move would hit morale and cut off a crucial link to family and friends.

In a separate move the Pentagon also introduced regulations clamping down on blogs by soldiers. Troops must now have any blog site, and its content, previewed and approved.

The Pentagon said that soldiers were still permitted to use personal laptops and nonmilitary computer servers to access sites including YouTube and MySpace, the social networking website of News Corporation, parent company of The Times,but Pentagon computers and networks are the only ones available to many troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

One sergeant from Arizona, speaking to The Times in Baghdad, said: “It will bring morale down. This is how a lot of people keep in touch with family and friends.

“Not every soldier has their own personal laptop, and not every FOB [forward operating base] has commercial access to the internet. It will affect them mostly.” Since last year YouTube has been used by Iraqi insurgents and the US military as part of the wider propaganda battle. Insurgents have posted videos of attacks on US troops, while the Pentagon has posted videos showing US forces defeating insurgents and befriending Iraqi civilians.

Noah Shachtman, who runs a national security blog for Wired magazine, says that the restrictions on blogging and access to websites seem intended to stop soldiers circulating bad news but could also prevent them from providing positive reports from the field.

“This is as much an information war as it is bombs and bullets,” he said. “And they are muzzling their best voices.” The announcement was made by General B. B. Bell, commander of US forces in South Korea, who said that the Pentagon was blocking world-wide access to the websites on military computers: “This recreational traffic impacts on our official DoD [Department of Defence] network and bandwidth ability, while posing a significant security challenge.”

The US military conceded last night that three soldiers missing in Iraq were probably in the hands of an insurgent group linked to al-Qaeda.

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