I'm no expert in these matters, but this looks an awful lot like General Petraeus' spokesman emailed Glenn Greenwald and is now trying to weasel out of responsibility for having done so. And of course if Colonel Boylan is telling the truth, then MNF-Iraq's computer systems certainly seem to be having some security problems that they ought to address.
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The Mystery Email
29 Oct 2007 08:34 am
Comments (17)
Whenever a member of this admin speaks the truth there is quickly that terrible moment of realization, followed by: "Oh my God, what have I done?!?! Did I say that? No, no, I didn't! You can't quote me! What, you already did?! Oh God, please help me. Think, think. OK, I know know what to do. Here's the deal, I never said what you're reporting. Never! You misconstrued me. I take it back. I was drunk. I was sick. I was misquoted. I resign. I never really worked for that department. I'd tell you but I'd have to kill you. So I said it, so what, obviously you've never heard of rendition." Add your favorites. Heckuva a job, Boylan!
That seems like the kind of thing I would do while really drunk, then hate myself for the next morning.
Situations like this are cause for real sadness and concern. The army is slowly becoming the REPUBLICAN GUARD.
JH
Reading the entire letter, it was certainly my first reaction that he was dialing while drunk, email style.
Of course, in vino, veritas.
I like John Cole's analysis myself. Even if there were some doubt about the authorship of the first message, the rest of the messages are clearly from him. And they show him to be an ass who shouldn't be working in PR.
Looks like a run-of-the-mill case of email multiple-personality psychosis.
About midway through the first letter, I was sure he was going to declare that Greenwald couldn't handle the truth.
Perhaps the press should approach this by publicly inquiring as to how the military's information systems got breached and what they plan to do about it. Thus, the brass can either cop to a far larger problem or just admit that Boylan lied.
the guy writes just like any of a thousand other pathetic wing-nut keyboard commandoes.
so, let's look at the up-side: at least one pathetic, wing-nut keyboard commando actually *has* done the right thing and gone to iraq.
now if we could just get the rest of the 101st keyboarders to volunteer, we might be able to fully staff the surge!
jonah? got that sorry ass to the recruiting office yet?
It's important to remember that Petraeus is just a Bush hack with four stars. His major achievement in Iraq was to not have his area of operations blow up on him, until four months after he left. At which point the chief of police and the police force he recruited and trained joined the guerrillas; which sounds more like that they were biding their time rather than Petraeus was doing much.
After that, Petraeus trained the Iraqi Army, back in the days of 'as they stand up, we'll stand down'. Once it was clear that the only standing up would be done by Kurdish militia and Shiite ethnic cleansers, that got moved into the category of 'politically incorrect history'.
BTW - remember the almost 200K weapons lost, with no ability to track them? A Petraeus job.
After that, he went on to write the new COIN manual, which (among other things) said that we simply don't have enough troops in Iraq to win.
That done, he got another star, and became the 'surge master', revising statistics and setting up Poptemkin markets for GOP PR photo ops.
In short, this colonel is scum, because he's high-ranking enough to be personally selected by a high-ranking scumbag.
Just like Matt to avoid the real issue here: liberal perfidy.
Don't get your hopes up people. The MSM won't touch this with a 10-foot pole. It doesn't fit the Saint Petraeus narrative. It doesn't matter how outrageous the conduct. It doesn't matter how stone-cold dead the evidence. IOKIYAR. Watergate is history. That's why we're all here, right?
Petraeus is just a Bush hack with four stars.
You could say something like this about Treasury Secretary Paulson, too, but it wouldn't be any more true. Both of them have gotten in bed with the White House, but it doesn't mean they're just hacks.
About midway through the first letter, I was sure he was going to declare that Greenwald couldn't handle the truth.
Ha.
Read my Oct. 18, 2007 article in Human Events to see where things really stand in Iraq.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=22855
"Both of them have gotten in bed with the White House, but it doesn't mean they're just hacks."
So what does it mean?
They're conscientious, truthful, honest, professional soldiers who are now lying for the White House?
Nice distinction.
The Boylan puff piece in Human Events was simply a joke. Just to take one example, it's irrelevant if the local Shia start looking at the Shia militias as "criminals". First of all, I've seen no poll saying they do, just a NYT article. Second, the militias have the organization and the guns and the people, so what the average citizen thinks really isn't relevant to the end result. The same applies to the Sunni side.
So until the Shia grant the Sunni appropriate representation in the government and an appropriate share of the oil revenues, it isn't going to matter what the locals think.
Not to mention that the article about "bottom up" activities supports the notion that the central government in Iraq is getting weaker, not stronger, at least as far as the local warlords - Shia and Sunni - are concerned.
It's a puff piece of the sort the military have been issuing since May, 2003. It's garbage. Reality lies elsewhere.
Comments closed November 12, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
These "security issues" are quite easy to address. All Boylan would have to do is digitally sign his mail. it's pretty clear he wrote the missive in any case; the analysis by the U of Oregon phd candidate linked in update VII is pretty hard to shake.
So what happens to this guy? Will there be a media firestorm?
Posted by jayackroyd | October 29, 2007 8:55 AM