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

When Pete Stark was excoriated by the wingnuts for stating that President Unitard was sending US troops to die in Iraq for the president's "amusement", it was clear to me that this remark was defensible, if the Democratic leadership was willing to back him up instead of buying into the Stark Raving Mad condemnation.

I believe that the Democrats had a handy "talking point" to support the general truth of Stark's impassioned comment, while still putting some daylight between them and the controversial word "amusement" that triggered all of the faux-outrage: the Dems, when confronted by teevee infotainwhores like Russert, Stephanopolous, etc., could/should have blithely assented that they could see how Stark's use of "amusement" may have been unfortunate, and perhaps misunderstood-- but after all, politicians speaking in the heat of the moment sometimes don't use the best wording.

Then they could/should have politely and respectfully referenced any of a thousand Unitard clips, e.g. "peeance freeance". See? It happens to the "best of us"! the Dems could/would have earnestly declared. I think this approach might've successfully nullified the infotainwhore's stock feigned astonishment or skepticism.

I mention this tangent in response to those who are surprised at Boylan's crude and fractured writing. Whether he was sober when he wrote it is beside the point. The point is that if such boorish, inarticulate, provocative, and even nonsensical utterances are tolerated in a Commander-in-Chief, it's no surprise that standards of conduct and capability for subordinates would sink to that level.

If this story has legs, and I think it ought to, I'm sure that wingnut bloggers will champion both Boylan's sending the e-mail to Glenn and Boylan's incoherent, snide, and captious message. True Believers and Patriots, operating with maximum cognitive dissonance, will disregard or discount the suggestion that Boylan's words and style evidence dangerously irrational and hostile thinking unacceptable in a truly professional military officer.

When military forces in an autocracy are politicized to this extent, "professional" standards slide to the lowest common denominator of amorally Defending the Boss (and his policies) and battling the designated Enemy(ies). I'm sure that to Boylan, Glenn is an irritant equivalent to an al-Qaeda terrorist who Hates Our Freedoms.

I guess I'm just pointing out that Boylan's e-mail is further proof that military officers currently in charge of "handling the truth" aren't required to be of good character, and to think and express themselves in a rational, dispassionate, civilized, enlightened manner. It's another of the depredations wrought by the criminal cabal in power.

PS: I expect that Nancy "Miss Manners" Pelosi will publicly apologize on Glenn's behalf.

That email sounds like the typical right wing bs. What is wrong with these people?

Also, what is wrong with the American people? Where is the outrage over the Bush tactics. Why aren't more people taking to the streets to demand change.

I think we need to begin impeachment against Bush. Rather than disrupt all the things the Democrats are "going to do:,

it might put some fear into him and his followers.

Thanks for all the great work you do.

Bill

We aren't there yet, of course, but a number of colorful concepts from the gulag era seem increasingly applicable.

Like samizdat, as applied to the blogosphere.

And zampolit as applied to apparatchiks like Boylan.

Walt Kelly nailed it decades ago.

http://www.igopogo.com/we_have_met.htm

Apparently not much. Col. Boylan's English:syntax, style and grammar, are those of a 12 year old. The infantile and pathetic content of his message to Glen is bad enough, but when you realize that this guy is supposed to be a fairly high ranking officer in the US military, you shudder at the notion that we are spending, or rather, wasting, half a trillion dollars per year on the military budget, and all that for a military that produces infantile morons like Boylan.

Here we have, in this one little email, all the elements of the right-wing hack communications style:

- Personal insult.

- An allegation of "unseriousness" on the part of his/her opponent.

- Picking on minor details to discredit the main argument while not refuting the central issue.

- The suggestion that people outside Iraq that disagree are somehow not entitled to criticism.

- The suggestion that someone like Alan Colmes constitutes a "liberal" perspective.

- And the coup de grace, a not-so-veiled dimunition of the masculinity of his/her opponent.

One has to feel an odd combination of wonder, futility, amusement, disgust, and futility reading this kind of hackery. It's almost like an especially bad copy off a horribly malfunctioning assembly line.

It's clear that they had other other criteria in the personnel decisions that put Boylan in his position, but couldn't they have found a partisan hack who wouldn't embarrassingly hatchet the mother-tongue. He's a public affairs officer, for Reagan's sake.

You really should accept the good Colonel's invitation to visit Iraq yourself.

I don't doubt that you physically possess a normal pair of balls. And I don't doubt your courage. I believe that actually putting yourself out there, as far and as uncomfortable as you can get from the Green Zone, would be a perspective-changing experience.

Go out with a Stryker patrol. Know what it's like for our grunts and Marines to feel the fear and the adrenalin.

What would you gain? Well, the next time a Colonel Boylan asshole tells you that you don't know what "ground truth" is, you can tell him you've done it, you've been out on night ambush, you've kicked in some doors, you've been fired on.

You do that, and you'll have the "ground truth" and you'll know for a fact, indisputable, that it's not what the Boylans say it is.

Where are the war journalists anymore? Where is the Larry Burroughs of the Iraq War? Where's the Michael Herr?

Glenn, Christiane Amanpour is over there off and on. Richard Engel actually lives in the Green Zone full time. Michael Ware is over there and he files stories on CNN that are going to get him killed one of these days.

So how about you, Glenn? It's a fair question.

I don't thing you are afraid of combat, although you should be and you sure will be if you ever get into the thick of it. If you have anything to fear, I think it would be that you might fear what you discover about yourself and about the soldiers and Marines in our military who do the things our country asks of them, day in and day out, month after grinding month, and they do it for almost no compensation except the pride of service.

So go, Glenn. Prove them wrong and gain something invaluable in the process.