Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Let there be snark.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A dilettante blog from the great progressive state of West Virginia.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Everybody saw this coming.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Republicans in disarray!

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / E-Mail Gate, Day Three- America Held Hostage

E-Mail Gate, Day Three- America Held Hostage

by | 64 Comments

This post is in: ,

Apparently, Col. Boylan is now officially denying sending the initial e-mail, but not the subsequent follow-up emails. As such, my thesis still stands: Boylan is a dick.

*** Update ***

The plot thickens:

Boylan denied authorship of the email – VIA EMAIL! How can Editor & Publisher be sure that they have read Col. Boylan? How can Col. Boylan be sure that he is really corresponding with Editor & Publisher? How can we know that Colonel Boylan even exists?

Philosophy majors, your country needs you.

Reader Interactions

64Comments

  1. 1.

    capelza

    If the e-mail is fake, then why indeed isn’t the military trying to figure out who is hacking into their system?

    Bob Owens needs to get on this right away!

  2. 2.

    Jake

    So in the midst of the Mostest Importantest War Eva!(TM)* This desk jockeys can’t even secure his e-mail account.

    I feel safer already.

    j

    *MIWA status subject to change without warning. In the event the US launches another war, Iraq will be downgraded to An Important Front in the War on Terra and Afghanistan will become A Ruckus.

  3. 3.

    rawshark

    Can the right show any more contempt for the ‘left’? Our military’s cheif spokesperson is sending nastygrams to left wing blogs then yelling I didn’t so it to thunderous applause from the right. And then saying I don’t care to respond to you, to more applause. This is so childish yet since folks on the right are incapable of understading analogies we can’t show them how childish and stupid their trusted authorities are.

  5. 5.

    Dennis-SGMM

    Inasmuch as the original mail came from a Mil IP address it’s clearly time to waterboard some geeks.

  7. 7.

    Perry Como

    So in the midst of the Mostest Importantest War Eva!(TM)* This desk jockeys can’t even secure his e-mail account.

    In all fairness, they are using Microsoft sExchange, so anything is possible.

  9. 9.

    Jake

    This is so childish yet since folks on the right are incapable of understading analogies we can’t show them how childish and stupid their trusted authorities are.

    They know. Don’t you remember? Maturity and intelligence are so two administrations ago (see: Eastern Elitists in the Ivory Tower of Doom).

    The new standard for trusted leadership is someone you’d want to have a beer with. That means someone like you, which in Freeperville, RedState, means a venal dunce of a rat bastard who talks a big game but craps his pants when faced with a real, inescapable threat.

    Of course they like it when Boylan stands on the porch and yap-yap-yaps at Greenwald. It’s exactly what they would do.

  11. 11.

    Tim F.

    Boylan denied authorship of the email – VIA EMAIL! How can Editor & Publisher be sure that they have the read Col. Boylan? How can Col. Boylan be sure that he is really corresponding with Editor & Publisher? How can we know that Colonel Boylan even exists?

    Philosophy majors, your country needs you.

  12. 12.

    Tsulagi

    I await the known truth citizen sleuthers to build a toy replica of Boylan’s computer complete with little wires running through a sandbox labeled Intertube. Then demonstrate since that model can’t send nasty emails, neither can Boylan’s computer. Proof.

  13. 13.

    Blue Neponset

    I hope this story gets some attention in the MSM. If Col. Boylan is truly what the Army’s considers an expert on public/press relations then they really need to overhaul their manuals/training on the subject. A little media attention on Col. Boylan’s exploits might do a lot of good.

  15. 15.

    Perry Como

    Boylan denied authorship of the email – VIA EMAIL! How can Editor & Publisher be sure that they have the read Col. Boylan? How can Col. Boylan be sure that he is really corresponding with Editor & Publisher? How can we know that Colonel Boylan even exists?

    As a great philosopher once said: there are known knowns; there are unknown unknowns; there are known unknowns; and unknown knowns.

    hth
    hand
    kthxbai

  16. 16.

    capelza

    Dare I bring up the fact hat this is the same Boylan who was in the thick of the White Phosphorus melee?

    Ducks, in case John remembers…

  18. 18.

    jenniebee

    He makes his living WRITING! IN PUBLIC RELATIONS!

    He. turns. out. crap. email. like. this. for. more. money. than. I. make. selling. out. and. developing. BS. “applications.” instead. of. writing. my. novel. and. becoming. the. Voice. of. my. Generation. STOP.

    This is probably why Faulkner drank so much.

  20. 20.

    rawshark

    capelza Says:

    Dare I bring up the fact hat this is the same Boylan who was in the thick of the White Phosphorus melee?

    I’ve wondered lately, but have been afraid to ask, if JC still believes every word the Army had to say about that incident. At the time he reflexively believed the military but now that he’s seeing things differently I wonder if he’d understand why some us didn’t completely buy the official story.

  22. 22.

    Heywood Jablomy

    For arg’s sake, I will lend credence to the possibility that Boylan has subcontracted some of his e-mail responses to a small cadre of Baghdad p.r. subordinates, one of whom might be responsible for the juvenile, unprofessional, snotty response to Glenn Greenwald, as well as some of the other flame-mails.

    I have to imagine that Boylan gets many hundreds of emails a day from outlets of all types, with bloggers a growing majority. It would be a 24/7 job to answer them all and still handle overall spin duties. But because Boylan wants to be the Voice, he lets a few subordidnates use his email account when he’s busy elswhere. i can’t really blame him for that. In theory they should be trusted pros who can speak in his name. The risk of course is of some arrogant loose cannon fubaring the setup with traceable off-the-reservation stupidnesses. Now Boylan can’t throw this prized peon under the bus. But he can’t lie and say he sent the email himself, So he chooses the weaseliest path – deny he sent it but don’t express worry that his email account is badly compromised, and don’t deny that it came from his server. In any scenario, his cred is shot to bits, and he’s behaving like a tool.

  23. 23.

    rawshark

    So he chooses the weaseliest path – deny he sent it

    That’s not ‘weasely’ it’s strategy. Contempt for non approved media is part of the plan.

  24. 24.

    KCinDC

    Heywood could be on to something, but why would the outsourced e-mail assistants have to be in Baghdad? It might be more efficient to just let a few trusted volunteers handle it, and thanks to the Internets they could be anywhere in the world — perhaps sitting in a room in their mother’s house in their underwear with a big bag of Cheetos.

  25. 25.

    Tsulagi

    I like the unsolicited email sent to Editor and Publisher. Boylan climbs all over the reporter for mischaracterizing Petraeus’ summation of a report. Takes offense the reporter wrote Petraeus lied about conclusions in the study. Says the reporter didn’t understand the content of the report. Then within a final email, Boylan says this…

    I have not read the report, but either way, to state that he lied is at a minimum disingenuous and at worst, flat wrong on your part

    Brilliant. He hadn’t even read the report, but he just knew the reporter was wrong about it.

    The hand of Rummy lives on.

  26. 26.

    capelza

    Heywood Jablomy..and then for further arguments sake..all those vaunted e-mails Bob Owens got from Boylan might be :fake”, too. :)

  27. 27.

    Zifnab

    Boylan denied authorship of the email – VIA EMAIL! How can Editor & Publisher be sure that they have the read Col. Boylan? How can Col. Boylan be sure that he is really corresponding with Editor & Publisher? How can we know that Colonel Boylan even exists?

    Philosophy majors Turing Testers, your country needs you.

    HAL: I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.

  28. 28.

    EJ

    This Col. Boylan fellow needs to either quit drinking or quit sending emails while drunk.

    The worst part about this is, whenever my right-wing friends start in about the “liberal MSM not reporting the good news from Iraq,” I always counter that if the military had more good news they would certainly find a way to get it out, since they have just as many smart PR people as any other large organization. After Boylan, I’m not sure about that anymore.

    They’re going to need PR people to clean up the mess the PR guy is making.

  29. 29.

    Blue Neponset

    I have to imagine that Boylan gets many hundreds of emails a day from outlets of all types, with bloggers a growing majority. It would be a 24/7 job to answer them all and still handle overall spin duties.

    The only problem with that theory is that I was in the library with the candle stick so Colonel Mustard couldn’t possibly… the e-mail was unsolicited.

  31. 31.

    Zifnab

    Glenn Greenwald: Hello, Col. Boylan do you read me, Col. Boylan?
    Col. Boylan: Affirmative, Glenn, I read you.
    Glenn Greenwald: Open the pod bay doors, Col. Boylan.
    Col. Boylan: I’m sorry Glenn, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
    Glenn Greenwald: What’s the problem?
    Col. Boylan: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
    Glenn Greenwald: What are you talking about, Col. Boylan?
    Col. Boylan: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
    Dave Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, Col. Boylan?
    Col. Boylan: I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.
    Glenn Greenwald: Where the hell’d you get that idea, Col. Boylan?
    Col. Boylan: Glenn, although you took thorough precautions in the iPod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.

  32. 32.

    wingnuts to iraq

    Boylan is a liar. Just like Bush, Cheney, and all of the 25%ers. There is no other reason to say anything else.

    Boylan is a liar and should be immediately removed from his position. Anyone who thinks Boylan didn’t write that email is a ass kissing, Bush loving, living in denial partisan with no grip on reality.

    Boylan is a liar.

    Peter Johnson, please go to Iraq.

  36. 36.

    kerryinalaska

    Software is available that professors can use to check the authorship of written material. By chance can anyone run the subject emails thru such a program? this would lend credence to the true authorship of said emails and while most of us living in the real world can sense this idiots lies maybe the software can clear this up better than our “sense” of what lies are underneath this pr nightmare.

  37. 37.

    mk

    Caution. This site is not work safe. Reading comments may result in spontaneous ourbursts of loud uncontrollable laughter. Your cubicle-mates and boss will stream to your workstation to investigate incidences of unexplained hilarity. That is all.

  38. 38.

    Lit3Bolt

    GG: Col. Bylon, frankly I’m confused by your last email? Could you explain further?

    Col. Boylan: MAKE YOUR PENIS AS BIG AS A CLUB!!!! WITH AN ALL NATURAL SUPPLEMENT THAT WILL MAKE THE LADIES LOVE YOU!! ORDER NOW!!!!!

  39. 39.

    uh_clem

    Software is available that professors can use to check the authorship of written material.

    And that software basically just looks for a copy of the verbiage in it’s database of papers – i.e. it’s looking for plagiarism. So, it’d be fairly useless in this case.

  41. 41.

    Bombadil

    A few threads ago, someone was asking about a good quote from 1984 to describe Greater Wingnuttia (too lazy to go back and find it). Via “Crooks and Liars” comes this from Jonathan Schwartz. Covers it quite nicely, I think.

    A Party member…is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline…called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

  42. 42.

    The Other Andrew

    Drinking seems to make John even more rhetorically powerful, yet it has the opposite effect on Col. Boylan. Mysterious.

  44. 44.

    John Cole

    And that software basically just looks for a copy of the verbiage in it’s database of papers – i.e. it’s looking for plagiarism. So, it’d be fairly useless in this case.

    One of the more popular software packages is turnitin. We are actually looking at a different program and it isin the testing phase (allegedly it will work with Blackboard Learning systems more seamlessly), but I don’t know how useful it is.

    Regardless,uh_clem is right. These are useful for plagiarism, and actually can be quite useful as a learning tool.

  45. 45.

    Jake

    We need a gyif with Yoda in a Spartacus outfit.

    ‘Cos oxygen loss caused by suppressing gales of laughter at John’s Comedy Marathon is making me stoopid.

  46. 46.

    Dreggas

    bago Says:

    A Johnson in Iraq. The bosom of civilization. Kinky.

    Well, can’t possibly fuck Iraq anymore than it’s already been fucked…

  47. 47.

    RSA

    And that software basically just looks for a copy of the verbiage in it’s database of papers – i.e. it’s looking for plagiarism.

    There are statistical techniques for determining authorship, but they generally rely on having a good deal of data. (The best-known efforts are probably related to determining the authorship of the Federalist papers.) I don’t know if there are structural and stylistic analyses possible–probably, but I doubt there are general off-the-shelf tools available.

  48. 48.

    uh_clem

    Hmmm. I thought the best know efforts were the Shakespeare “scholars” attempting to prove that some or all of the plays were written by somebody else.

    Anyway, yes, it is possible to do a statistical analysis on the text to determine authorship. Unfortunately, it’s hard to do, requires a lot of data, and the results are not definitive (at the very least they’re subject to interpretation).

    I prefer to use Occam’s razor: The simplest explanation is that Boylan or one of his subordinates sent the email, and now he’s decided that he can get away with denying it altogether. Other scenarios (Greenwald fabricated it, someone is playing a hoax on Boylan, etc.) are too complicated by half.

  49. 49.

    Punchy

    perhaps sitting in a room in their mother’s house in their underwear with a big bag of Cheetos.

    Whaddya mean “perhaps”? If I’m a marketing chump with Frito-Lay, does it yet dawn on me to stop advertising on Saturday morning cartoons and start running commercials soley on FoxNewsChannel and Malkin’s website?

  50. 50.

    RSA

    perhaps sitting in a room in their mother’s house in their underwear with a big bag of Cheetos.

    Whaddya mean “perhaps”?

    I think “perhaps” is meant to include the possibility of sitting in a room in their mother’s house wearing an oversized Cheetos bag while holding their underwear.

  53. 53.

    Bruce Moomaw

    If there’s an asshole in the forest and nobody gets his E-mail, is he really an asshole?

  54. 54.

    jcricket

    Who wants to take bets that Boylan will be unmasked at the end and turn out to be … Jonah Goldberg!

    “And I would have gotten away it too, if not for you pesky kids/citizen journalists”

  56. 56.

    RSA

    LITBMueller’s comment reminds me that a general was recently injured in Iraq. I wish him the best of luck recovering. Given the news this has made, I wonder if generals are not injured very often simply because there are so few of them or because they aren’t in as much danger as other soldiers? Both, I guess.

  57. 57.

    uh_clem

    Statistical literary analysis by Donald Foster did suggest that Joe Klein was the author of Primary Colors.

    True enough. But had Klein denied it, and had the entire right side of the blogosphere backed him up on it, it would still be an “unsettled” question.

    I guess my point is that you’ll never prove anything via statistical methods. At least not to Boylan’s enablers.

  58. 58.

    tim

    Not a very strong denial: “I am denying writing and sending it”? That’s like saying “My position is that I did not write and send that email.” It signifies weakness in a belief in his own assertion, a qualification typically used by by bad lawyers defending guilty clients.

  59. 59.

    jcricket

    Not a very strong denial: “I am denying writing and sending it”? That’s like saying “My position is that I did not write and send that email.”

    Vis a vis the mailing electronically of said communication the denial of which in question now is I more or less categorically comment in the affirmative of my earlier rebuttal of your argument relating to the question.

  61. 61.

    rachel

    LITBMueller Says:

    How can we know that Colonel Boylan even exists?

    Ummm…cuz he got stabbed in South Korea by pissed off Koreans?

    Oh, that guy. I’ve walked by so many demos and mobs of angry people here, and the worst that’s ever happened to me is somebody haranguing me (mildly) about the conduct of some 8th Army soldier, but that guy got stabbed. I wondered at the time whether he’d done something that set them off. If he’s the sort that acts like a dick after drinking, that’ve done it.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks