Letters to the Editor
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Boylan's denial
This is weird, Boylan doesn't seem to sense that he's digging himself deeper.
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Here's hoping someone competent gets the Colonel's slot.
Or at least someone who can speak without mangling the english language.
As for Colonel Boylan? Here's hoping he get's help, or get's a life. At the very least he should get his security clearance pulled.
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Stay on his tail.
Again, I hope that Glenn will pursue this matter until the Colonel's head explodes. The blast will be somewhat insignificant in the environs of Baghdad, but still...
As has been pointed out many times, the repeated question of "Are you not alarmed about the intrusion into a military computer?" goes uncommented in Boylan's responses. Three different people have asked him to address that issue, and he has not even acknowledged that the question has been asked.
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Even more curious...
"As we have learned repeatedly over the last six years, those who tell the truth and have done nothing wrong want investigations; guilty parties want to avoid them. If Col. Boylan is telling the truth, one would think he'd be eager to have an investigation -- governmental or media -- to find out what actually happened. Yet he has done nothing to initiate one and everything possible to ensure it does not happen. Why would that be?"
What is particularly interesting is that this attitude is found in someone whose commander-in-chief says that people who object to warrantless wiretapping must have something to hide.
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Of course, controlling the terms of the disagreement
is more useful to them than actually addressing your arguments on the merits.
If this issue (the source of the email) is the subject of the dispute, it is more to their advantage than if they were forced to argue your actual point, that the military is becoming increasingly politicized.
It also make you available (yet again) as a subject of the latest "two minutes hate" as you mentioned yesterday.
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Catch 22 was better, but...
The picture in my head is from the movie M*A*S*H - of Robert Duvall, playing Frank Burns, being hauled off in a helicopter wearing a straight jacket and a scowl.
Paranoia in the military? Um, redundant?
Keep up the good work, Glenn!
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Boylan and his boss may have other things to worry about
And I don't mean Iraq.
October 30, 2007
A CounterPunch Special Investigation
Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual
* Core Chapter a Morass of "Borrowed" Quotes
* University of Chicago Press Badly Compromised
* Counterinsurgency Anthropologist Montgomery McFate's Role Under Attack
By DAVID PRICE
Editors' note: This expose of the stolen scholarship in the Army's new manual on counterinsurgency to which General David Petraeus has attached his name also runs in our current newsletter sent by US mail or as a pdf to our newsletter subscribers. Normally material in our newsletter does not run on the CounterPunch website. In the belief that David Price's story merits the widest and swiftest circulation, not only as regards the "borrowings" from unacknowledged sources but also the prostitution of anthropology in evil military enterprises we re making an exception in this case. AC / JSC
If I could sum up the book in just a few words, it would be: "Be polite, be professional, be prepared to kill."
--John Nagl, The Daily Show...
http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html
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Boylan Mad
Wow, Glenn. This episode is astounding. Congratulations. It looks like a rout.
The colonel's grammar alone should disqualify him from his position. He does not even attempt to mask his hostility, and he cannot hide his dissembling. I've never seen such a lack of professionalism from someone whose job is, in part, to win the hearts and minds of opinion makers. No doubt he wants this all to go away. He's made a mess of things, and he's not long for his position. I hope he's better at peeling potatoes than he is at PR.
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Nuts
I'm telling you, this is getting creepy.
Bush tactics, sure, if you accept that Boylan's behavior is rational.
Suppose that is not the case, then the man, considering his position, is clearly losing it, Apocalypse Now-style, Redux.
Then again, who would not be losing it in Iraq?
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Brazen It Out
I sent Col. Boylan a post suggesting that he resign. He did not reply because I suppose he intends to do what Sen. Larry Craig did, and that is to brazen it out, and simply repeat his or his superior's talking points, no matter how absurd they are. This whole thing is sad, bizarre. But ultimately it's just the tip of the massive iceberg of neo-con criminality and incompetence.
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My mama always said
What a tangled web we weave,
When first we practice to deceive.
(Sir Walter Scott)
Colonel Boylan should have heeded mama's advice before starting this reckless chain of events. Now he's spinning faster and faster, getting even more tangled up in his web of lies.
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Boylan, not to be believed
("I do not read Mr. Greenwald's postings as I find that they are just that, his opinions and therefore would not have any reason to email him")
This "I do not read" statement reminded me of Clarence Thomas's statement that "I did not watch" Anita Hill's testimony.
Another statement not to be believed.
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Typing while drunk?
I have to wonder if that's what occured, and now Boylan can't own up to it.
The term used above "brazen it out" does seem to apply.
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I think you're missing the point.
I posted the following at the end of the thread regarding abject stupidity. Call me narcissistic, but I think it warrants some consideration:
With few exceptions, left-leaning members of the media fail to understand the significance of the work of their right-wing counterparts. People like you hold GOP propaganda to standards like accuracy and logic, but you do so because those are standards that you value. (In the interest of full disclosure, I value those standards, too.) I can tell you as someone who had the great misfortune of being raised in a fundamentalist Southern Baptist, Republican home in the deep South that the GOP propagandists and their consumers most assuredly do not value these standards. Right now, the purpose of GOP propaganda is to create enough cognitive noise to sustain the support of their political base. If their message seems irrational or incoherent, it's no accident; it's their intention. Even the slightest glimmer of coherence or reason among their constituency would mean abandonment en masse of a party whose policies are a manifest failure. In real world terms, that would mean the President's having a 5% approval rating rather than 30%. In such a situation, even the most ardent Republican members of Congress would have to back away from him, and the Democrats could set the agenda (if they could find one testicle to share amongst themselves).
So you and your readers may find it stupid, among other things, that the right-wing blogosphere is ginning up a story out of nothing, based on your posts. However, they most assuredly do not care that they seem stupid to us. The purpose of their work is to indoctrinate their readers with this message: "An honorable war hero is being slandered and mistreated by an America-hating blogger." Because the real message of your post, "One of the foundations of our democracy and its military is actively being destroyed by this administration," is absolutely the last thing they want their people to comprehend.
I think the only useful analysis of GOP propaganda is Chomsky-esque meta-analysis. Trying to argue with the right on the terms they raise means having to run down an infinite number of irrational red herrings. For you, that meant entertaining skeptics questioning the authenticity of Col. Boylan's original email, an email whose authenticity was implicit in its content. In turn, that meant employing computer experts to determine whether or not Col. Boylan wrote an email that he most assuredly did. The real message is Col. Boylan is an obvious liar on several fronts, but they've succeeded in distracting you. This is almost exactly the strategy Karl Rove employed in 2004 in response to 60 Minutes' story providing further evidence that Bush cheated his way out of National Guard service; questions of authenticity were raised by right-wing bloggers hilariously ready to raise them minutes after the story aired. (It's worth noting that part of the 60 Minutes' story involved high-ranking military officers protecting GOP loyalists.)
As an aside, I can tell you that I got out of the Army two years ago, and as far as the GOP's becoming the defacto party of the military is concerned, that ship may have already sailed.