Mr. Greenwald:

Please continue to follow this story whereever it may lead. Would it be possible to file a freedom of information act claim to obtain more details about the e-mail? I would assume that all "non-classified" e-mails sent in the public domain using a computer purchased by the federal government would be subject to the freedom of infomration act.

To paraphrase Digby, it may be decades before the politicization is totally removed from supposed "non-partisan" elements of our government, even with a president of the Democratic party.

Boylan has perjured himself responding to E&P in his official role as PR spokesman for the Gen.Petraeus. They made a media inquiry, he lied to them. Dishonesty via official statements is grounds for charges of Conduct Unbecoming an Officer.

from Col. Boylan MUST be considered fake.

Such charming comments you make.

By the way, I thought all Glenn's readers were here voluntarily, reading his posts of their own free will. I sincerely doubt anybody is MAKING you read something you find "hyperbolic" regarding middle management of the US Army.

Here, give this a try:

www.redstate.com

See if that suits you better.

My mistake. Not under oath but certainly full of it.

I admit to holding on to a belief in a military code of honor. And I don't think I'm alone - why else would the "administration" trot out magnificently uniformed military men whenever it needed authoritative credibility? (Colin Powell's disgraceful performance at the UN springs to mind). However, I am beginning to wonder if the US military has been corrupted by the same movement that has infected the political life of our once-great Republic: the neo-fascist idealogs who lie, cheat and steal because the ends justify the means. (and after all, armageddon will clean up everything, including our enemies, especially since we are hastening its arrival).

This man Boylan, like the rest of his ilk, is a mediocraty. And the hallmark of the mediocre and incompetent is that they lie to cover up their mediocracy and incompetence.

Go get him, Glenn! We can only purge these scum one at a time.

I for one, am totally interested in seeing this investigated. It is unbelievable to me that this hasn’t been picked up by a major outlet yet. This story is the "meta" story of who owns the media, how liberals are treated and marginalized how the republican party and their hacks can say and do anything and get away with it. This fake email shows us just how much power the right wing has in it's devotees. It can either hack the .mil sites and send out emails impersonating military officers, or it can convince them to deny sending those emails. Which is more insidious and why isn’t this a major headline already?

It's all well and good to link to _zack's_ comment regarding the importance of outing Our Boy Boylan's(OBB's) misfiring attempt to shut up a Dirty Hippie, but that doesn't tell us what Glenn's goal is.

Do you want him fired? Court-martialed? Reassigned? Promoted? Investigated? What? What do you want to happen here? Do you want anything to happen to Boylan at all?

He's obviously taken the tack that You Don't Matter. Of course he can get away with it -- as he is doing so far. SOP in the field. He's taken to denying that he sent the first email on Sunday -- denying it to others, not to you. More SOP. As he has said, he chooses not to "engage" with you. Our military has quite a reputation for dissembling, a reputation well and truly earned, yet despite the fact that much of what comes out of the PAOs is fictitious or even outright lies, it is accepted far and wide. OBB has a reputation for dissembling. For attempted intimidation. For insulting diatribes.

Do you want to change that?

How do you propose to?

The fact that these things are going on, routinely, in the military's "engagement" with the public is a very important matter that should long ago have been addressed. OBB may be a particularly obnoxious example of a PAO, but his example is not rare at all. It is the Standard. They routinely lie to the public and insult their intelligence; they routinely curry favor with wingnut and neocon media outlets, providing extensive propaganda for their dissemination; they routinely ignore or distance themselves from self-described Progressive outlets. They intimidate, threaten and abuse anyone and everyone who challenges their "facts" and disputes the Glory of Their Commanders.

The practice is dishonorable on its face. All of this needs to be exposed, needs to be addressed, needs -- in my view -- to be eliminated from the military's behavior with the public. It's an infection that needs treatment.

But what do you hope to accomplish in this particular case? What do you want Boylan and his superiors to do?

for what it's worth, a very very good friend is in the military and for a substantial part of his career, he was an officer engaging in public relations. (He was later assigned to the Pentagon and worked with officials at the very VERY highest levels; he was a career officer)

One thing that I noticed in our occasional chats is that being in that position inculcated in him a very disciplined manner regarding anything he said about the military. That is, he chose his wording very carefully, and when he couldn't talk about something, he was artful (and I mean that as a compliment) in talking about it without really saying much of substance or that was revealing.

I could be wrong to base my evaluation of military on my friendship with this one person, but I don't think I am. A professional military spokesperson wouldn't engage in the kind of polemics and outright, easily disproven lying which Boylan demonstrates.

However, a polemicist/propagandist sure would. In fact, this kind of nonsense which Boylan is engaging in, is EXACTLY what I would expect from a political spinmeister or Fox News Channel partisan hack.

So... is Col. Boylan a professional, disciplined military spokesman or is he a partisan propagandist? Look at what he says and does, and judge him accordingly.