Letters to the Editor
Jim White
Published Letters: 1088 Editor's Choice: 15
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Speculation on next steps
[Read the article: A bizarre, unsolicited e-mail from Gen. Petraeus' spokesman ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Blatant speculation:
If this was an attempt at a "Rathergate", then we can expect sometime today some leaked "evidence" to appear somewhere in outer wingnuttia. As several commenters have pointed out, this path has been made a bit treacherous with the careful header analysis, but this group simply has no regard for the truth and will come up with an "explanation".
If this was simply Boylan getting carried away and hitting "send" when he should have hit "delete", then I would also expect something to come out in out wingnuttia today, but, in this case, what would come out would be a defense along the lines of how hard Boylan has to work under such difficult conditions, and why wouldn't we expect someone to "snap" now and then under those conditions.
However, if Central Command has realized just how serious this really is, then expect an underling of Boylan to be thrown under the bus today. He will be reported to have used Boylan's computer without authorization. This will happen if that is really the case and will happen if Boylan's computer or the network in Iraq has been compromised. There is no chance that compromising of the network would be reported truthfully.
Finally, I would put our chances of ever really finding out what happened at approximately zero.
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Bluto?
[Read the article: Abject stupidity defined]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seriously?
Glenn, I don't think you even need any spinach for this one.
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Cyber-war?
[Read the article: Follow-up on the Col. Steven Boylan e-mail exchange]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But other Air Force officials see U.S. military policy as too timid. "Legislation, policies and international law are lagging the technology" in the cyber-domain, Lani Kass, a senior adviser to U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley, told another recent conference. "The United States is late to the fight."
She said U.S. tactics in cyberspace were constrained by political correctness.
"Today it is much easier to get permission to kill the enemy, to drop a bomb on a terrorist hideout, than to culturally offend them. In other words, take a beheading video, take it off the net, and substitute -- whatever you like: Bay Watch? The technology is there. It's there in the civilian world. But the policies are such that you can't do that."
And further down in the same article:
One congressional official told United Press International that caution was appropriate in what he called "virgin territory" from a strategic theory point of view.
"If we drop a bomb on a house, we have a pretty good idea of what the collateral damage will be ¿¿ if we take down a server somewhere, the possible results are a lot less clear."
Elder said from a defensive point of view, the Air Force is interested not just in protecting its own networks, which he called "perimeter security," but also in "getting out beyond the wire" and building "defense in depth" in the cyber-domain.
On any Air Force base, he said, the ultimate last line of defense is the sidearm that every airman carries. He said a "cyber-sidearm program" would give "every airman the tools, right on their laptop or desktop" to defend the cyber-domain.
But Kass believes "if you're defending, you are late."
"Cyber favors the offense. Defense in cyberspace in my humble opinion is a loser's game."
Okay, I know Boylan is Army and this article is about Air Force. But you have to admit, it's very interesting that the military is talking about using cyber techniques. Is something like this involved? We won't know unless or until the actual logs on the servers discussed in the headers are analyzed. Anyway, if the defense of Boylan is going to center around his never having sent the first email, the resources the military could bring to bear to make the argument are quite impressive.
Link:http://tinyurl.com/234drw
This article claims to be reposting a UPI story; I'm late to a meeting so I don't have time to find the original wire story. Maybe someone else can provide that for us.
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Uhm
[Read the article: Another election fiasco in Florida?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That would be BILL Nelson.
And make no mistake, although a Democratic state senator or two may have helped, this was cooked up by the Republicans in the state legislature to produce precisely this result.
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Update III
[Read the article: Follow-up on the Col. Steven Boylan e-mail exchange]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Now that Boylan is unambiguously denying that he either wrote or sent the long email that started this, he is in quite a small box. As several of us have suggested, his (and the military's) only way out of it at this point is to find a scapegoat among his aides. This scapegoat will be found to have used Boylan's computer and/or email account to send the diatribe. The fact that this strategy is being employed suggests that Petraeus and the White House believe that throwing Boylan under the bus would reflect too badly on Petraeus.
PS: "In fact, Beauchamp was blocking him from speaking to the media at that time." I suspect you meant to say that Beauchamp's superior officer was blocking him from speaking, as the link that this statements connects to demonstrates.
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@bamage
[Read the article: Follow-up on the Col. Steven Boylan e-mail exchange]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Didn't we do this previously? You mention a small bit of errata, and I chime in afterwards?
Yes, but note the difference in behavior here compared to the likes of Bluto (I still think that may be the worst choice of moniker since tiberius--don't these people do ANY reading before they choose?). Glenn and his dedicated band of commenters are determined to get at the truth of matters and are entirely capable of finding and then correcting errors of rapid writing or reading. Bluto is committed to defending a screed that Boylan now (through a third party) is disavowing, and is doing further logical gymnastics simply because he forgot how those little linky thingies work.