The major difference is that we were dealing with a rational actor in the Soviet Union. Yes, it was our enemy, but would could always count on them to do the rational thing. That's why MAD (mutually assured destruction) worked for 40-plus years.

The jihadis are irrational actors. They want to die, hence the usual deterrents are pointless. And they have to get lucky only once.

-- Titus Pullo

I disagree, strongly enough to register to make this comment.

The Jihadis are quite rational. They have a definite ideology and definite goals, and they need to have people standing at the end or they would have lost. The willingness to die comes from the fact of facing an enemy a million times stronger. The fact that the leadership hasn't self-immolated by now also proves that they are not irrational.

It is a different matter that conventional deterrence (Mutually Assured Destruction) won't work. The Jihadis cannot destroy us. Doing, e.g., the equivalent of the WW II blitz on London is beyond them (and London is still thriving). We are bent on destroying them anyway (actually, given the enthusiasm Bush has had in capturing/killing bin Laden, I may be wrong on this point.)

I think a post-apartheid-South Africa type Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but this time for the war in Iraq, is one way to flush ourselves of this poison.

--

Let us note that a lot of Americans don't vote. It means that they feel insulated from Washington - either that they don't count or else that Washington doesn't count. This needs to change.

--

Glenn,

This email is really bizarre, and I cannot imagine anyone with an ounce of professionalism sending it. Please verify that it is authentic. It is entirely possible for someone to make it appear that an email came from a particular address, when in fact, it did not.

Though you've stuck to the facts in your commentary, it may still be an attempt to take you down like Dan Rather.

Tread carefully.

Appreciate all your writing. At least there's one of you; I once believed the newspapers would be full of writers like you.

As an example, how easy it is to fake email is described here.

http://www.xult.org/fake.html

L.W.M. wrote It would probably be a serious federal offense if it was, impersonating a military officer, even in an e-mail.

Certainly, I hope so. But L.W.M., here is where Glenn will hit the *real* politicization of the other branches of this government - which Federal Agency is going to investigate this email should it turn out to be a hoax?

Additionally, all of the adornments (titles and pre-programmed signature lines and the like) and formatting are identical. Most convincingly (to me), Col. Boylan has, as I noticed during my prior email exchange with him, a -- how shall we say? -- idiosyncratic grammatical style that is quite recognizable though difficult to replicate, and the e-mail I received this morning -- from start to finish -- is written in exactly that style. I don't see any reason at all to doubt its authenticity.

As the following shows, other people have had access to the titles, signature lines, formatting and grammatical style.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2007/08/post_8.asp

The best way to verify is for you to write to Col. Boylan and request that he quote back in its entirety your request in his response as a proof of authenticity. While anyone can hack a mail server to send a email as Col. Boylan, it would take much more to intercept your email to him.

Glenn, I don't know if your headline was concocted by your editor or by you, but it says "...bizarre...email". That itself indicates that this is not what your previous interactions with Col. Boylan would lead you to expect.

It doesn't hurt to verify more. As someone who only has professional awareness, but not professional competence in Internet security, and as a well-wisher of yours who does not want to see you have to back down on even a single word of yours, I make this last request - please verify.

The following is to record some facts, not to urge action one way or the other about verification:

1. The October 21, 2005 issue of Scimitar, available online, has the email address of "Combined Press Information Center Director Lt. Col. Steven A. Boylan", therefore I judge that the email address is in the public domain.

2. It is easy enough to get some basic information about the iraq.centcom.mil servers. If I were a braver man I might attempt to make a simple test to see if it is possible to make those servers serve fake email. Right now I don't even want to try to ping them.

3. Assuming a forgery, I doubt someone would be as simple-minded as outlined here:

https://www.ualberta.ca/AICT/Security/headers-tutorial.html

Taking Col. Boylan at his word, there is another story lurking here, IMO. It means that the iraq.centcom.mil servers can be spoofed. I can imagine that someone could provoke an international incident by spoofing email to be from an official spokesperson of the US Military.

Ah, maybe they can be spoofed only by someone *within* the domain. Still a problem, don't you think? Hey, if Scott Beauchamp wants to give the military a black-eye, then aren't there other people in a similar position who might want to do so?

If Boylan is not alarmed, then things really stink.

The Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has reserved the following three blocks of the IP address space for private internets:

10.0.0.0 - 10.255.255.255 (10/8 prefix)

172.16.0.0 - 172.31.255.255 (172.16/12 prefix)

192.168.0.0 - 192.168.255.255 (192.168/16 prefix)

(from http://faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1918.html )

Therefore only someone within centcom.mil can trace 10.70.20.16.