It looks like the U.S. Army has decided to let our nation’s soldiers take part in social networking after years of blocking access to sites like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

Wired.com says army commanders recently ordered network managers at military bases to stop blocking access to some popular social networks. Many bases prevented soldiers from getting to these sites, despite the fact that the military itself uses them for self promotion.

It is “the intent of senior Army leaders to leverage social media as a medium to allow soldiers to ‘tell the Army story’ and to facilitate the dissemination of strategic, unclassified information,” says the order, obtained by Danger Room.

Apparently, the order doesn’t apply to bases overseas and doesn’t affect the other armed services. And it doesn’t neccesarily mean soldiers will have access to every social network - just those available from the Army  homepage.