A Blog That Kept Time in Afghanistan and Iraq Plans to Shut Down Four years ago, I began a blog on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq called CORKSPHERE. I started it because as a military veteran I felt the wars were not getting the attention they deserved from the mainstream news media. Soon, I expect to end it. I was drafted in 1951 and trained as a combat engineer. During the Korean War -- "The Forgotten War" -- I served stateside, handling classified documents, but my company shipped out to Korea and suffered heavy casualties. After I received an honorable discharge on Aug. 5, 1953, I moved to Los Angeles and enrolled at UCLA, majoring in journalism. Over the years, I was a picture editor at CBS television, an account executive for a public relations firm in Hollywood and then the head of my own firm in Chicago. I even wrote a gossip column and an opinion column for a chain of newspapers in suburban Chicago. I'm 83 years old and live in the same home on Chicago's Far Southwest Side we have lived in for 50 years. But I have always remained interested in veterans' issues. And so when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, I vowed that I would not allow them to turn into "forgotten wars," and that I would do everything possible to bring the conflicts into the homes of the American public through a blog of my own. My goal initially was to bring to readers the very latest videos and articles on what was happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. I used a number of Web sites, including YouTube, Yahoo, Iraq Today, Al Jazeera and videos that were sent to me by military personnel serving in the combat theaters. It was tedious at first because I didn't have the contacts needed to provide information on a daily basis from the war zones. However, as days stretched into months and months into years, the blog became very popular, mostly with military families and veterans, and at its peak it was pulling in over 3,000 page views a day. The blog passed one million hits over a year ago. But something was happening: both the news media and the American public were suffering from "war fatigue." Interest in the blog was waning. Blog viewership dropped to under 200 hits a day, and even though I was posting fresh material on Facebook and Twitter, it became more and more obvious to me that the American public was no longer very interested in a conflict that, in the case of the Afghan war, had entered its 12th year. I'm a realist and I'm fully aware that after so many years it is hard for people to continue to care deeply about a conflict that doesn't seem to have any end goal or sense of mission. So a few weeks ago, I decided I would stop the blog after the election. I'm leaving the door open just a bit to a last-minute change of heart. If I do stop posting, however, I intend to keep it on the Internet as a historical reference for anyone interested in the Iraq and Afghan wars. There have been many gratifying moments. One involved a woman who wrote me after I had posted a video of a firefight in Afghanistan that included her son. She said that she had not heard from him in weeks and that she was thrilled to be able to see him in the video. She went on to tell me what a wonderful job I was doing for all the military families who felt as she did, that the media had let them down in its coverage of the Afghan war. Another time, I received a comment from an American journalist who was staying at a hotel in Baghdad. I had posted a news report and video about how the fortified "green zone" was under mortar fire. The reporter wondered if I had more information on the attack because he was hunkered down in the hotel and couldn't go outside. Unfortunately, I was unable to help him, other than to let him know that there were no American casualties. Despite those many grateful readers, it is hard for me not to feel dismayed about the lack of interest and coverage of the end of the Iraq war, and much of the war in Afghanistan. Even in a heated presidential campaign, there has been virtually no discussion of the raging Afghan conflict. Iraq is still going through a very rough transition and there are an increasing number of suicide attacks and roadside bombings aimed at the Iraqi people by any number of militant groups who are in opposition to the present Iraq government. Afghanistan could and possibly will slip back into Taliban control when the United States pulls its forces out in 2014. But I believe we have done our best to train the Afghan National Army and now it is time for the Afghan people to solve their own problems and provide security for their people. I just wish we were discussing those developments more as a nation. Bill Corcoran, a retired public relations executive who lives near Chicago, was a combat engineer in the United States Army. He received an honorable discharge as a corporal.