If the sender of the email turns out to be Boylan, he has kissed away his chances of making general.

Remember, promotions to general must be approved by the Senate.

I have seen a number of outstanding bird colonels who couldn't even get nominated for promotion because they had fucked up things that didn't reflect this poorly upon the service.

If he is the author, Boylan knows this is will be his fate. Thus his denial.

Assuming that there isn't a sudden development that renders this story a "false alarm", it deserves being investigated and reported beyond Glenn's personal published accounts here.

To the extent that Alan Colmes may get involved, fine. But I certainly wouldn't want to leave the ball in Colmes' court very long. He's not exactly Seymour Hersh or Jeremy Scahill or Greg Palast. Or Joe Conason.

Even if one believes that Colmes' day job as Hannity's eunuch/beanbag is a "role", and that there's more to Colmes than meets the eye, this "role" must take a toll. Like career heavyweight boxers, all those kicks from Hannity must eventually cause permanent brain and soul damage. Colmes may have a constructive role in advancing this story, but not as its principal investigator and reporter.

There's always "Sixty Minutes".

Yeah but, is that your real name?

This ridiculous blog entry is a clear indication of that. If he didn't send you the e-mail it's too bad because he was clearly justified to send it.

-- tiberius

Okay, honey, calm down now and have another bottle of pop. Mommy will be here if you need her.

Funny that this guy doesnt have the cajones to stand behind his own emails yet he implies GG is too scared to visit the Green Zone with all those other brave right wing bloggers..LOL

Lord where do they find these jokers.

I think that a member of Congress needs to get Col. Boylan under oath to testify whether he authored this email because if he didn't than someone (perhaps an enemy of the US) has infiltrated military email and can impersonate high ranking Pentagon officials jeopardizing National Security. They also may want to investigate (while they've got him under oath) whether military officials are selectively leaking information for political purposes in which case congressional funds may need to be withheld until the situation is corrected.

I mentioned Alan Colmes because in the past Glenn has said that outside of the constricted format of Hannity & Colmes that Alan does ask good questions and is an informed interviewer. He is also mentioned in “Boylan’s” e-mail (giving him a personal interest in the story), and is someone who would certainly be responsive to Glenn’s inquiries, having had Glenn as a guest on his radio show repeatedly.

Also, it would be more difficult for Boylan to refuse to answer Colmes questions after just “complimenting” him in this e-mail.

That’s why I suggested Colmes as a quick starting point for Glenn and this story - not as the best journalist around. Boylan’s response would determine where the story goes next, and to what level.

There's something strange about this. He sounds drunk. There are a lot of weird [substandard] grammatical constructions.

It is possible that someone other than Col Boylan sent an e-mail under Boylan's name. Given the right circumstances, that person would not have to authenticate the e-mail.

Spam became a problem because of trusting SMTP servers. Mail servers were unwitting accomplices in propagating spam because they accepted mail from anywhere.

Now, it is typical for mail servers to accept mail from internal addresses without question, and to send it along as though it's authenticated.

I don't know if the Army has this policy for unclassified communications in war zones, but it seems probable because I imagine all sorts of VIPs need to plug in and not have any trouble sending stuff around.

Hypothesis: The Army system is set up like I described.

Consequence: Anyone attached to the network could send e-mail under Boylan's name.

What about the IP addresses?

IP addresses are often assigned by DHCP but not checked afterwards. If Col Boylan uses a laptop computer, it may not assigned to the same address every time. But, even if it is, and his computer is not currently connected, someone else could use Boylan's IP address and nobody would notice. In unclassified environments, these things are not considered very important.

Hypothesis: The Army system is not careful about ensuring that every packet sent from a specific IP address came from the network interface that was assigned that IP address.

Consequence: Someone could spoof Boylan's IP address.

For the time being, I would count on the evidence that Boylan did not write the e-mail. It is still possible you have never e-mailed the guy, ever. It's also possible that someone has been sockpuppeting him for quite some time. Perhaps he never reads things on the Internet!

I would address all of these issues to the Army signal corps and to CINC CENTCOM At the very least, someone is being unprofessional, and possibly there is illegal stuff going on. If they act like nothing happened, that's a story in and of itself!

I've been a sysadmin for 25 years, split evenly between UNIX/SMTP and MS Exchange. The conclusion reached by Booth rings true to me--Boylan either sent this e-mail himself, or he allowed someone to do so on his behalf from his pc. Either one amounts to the same thing--he is a jerk and guilty of conduct well outside the realm of his professional duty. For any other possibility to even be considered, he would have to produce, literally, a ton of documentation basically showing how his pc could have been so badly compromised. There are a lot of people in the military paid a lot more money than most of us to make sure this sort of thing NEVER happens.

As a former US military officer, I know that ordinarily he would be quickly removed from any position of responsibility/authority and "advised" to retire. But these aren't ordinary times, are they? In today's reality-denial mode, up is down, war is peace, and defeat is victory, so this man is filling the bill quite nicely.

What does the incident itself say about our military and about our government? That an officer of this rank could even think of pulling such a stunt, and then be so disrespectful and rude, speaks volumes about today's military. The leadership is an arm of the politics of war--corrupt and completely unconcerned with the perceptions of the general public (beyond forking over a few bones to right-wing blow-hards). When Boylan is rude and disrespectful to you Glen, he is rude and disrespectful to me, my family, and my town.

It's like Kafka and Orwell all mixed up together. I'm sick, ashamed and afraid of my government, and very much believe it will get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

My wife thinks we will be moving soon, and things like this make me think it will be sooner and farther than either of us imagine.