Greenwald: Dealing From Half a Deck

It is amazing to me how often Glenn Greenwald can trip over his own tounge and still be convinced he’s smarter than everyone else. This one’s going to require some background.

As Bruce McQuain noted the other day, the left is all atwitter about how the right end of the sphere is getting better access, supposedly, to the military. Bruce basically destroyed that argument.

So, in spite of being shown that there is no favoritism here on the part of the Military, in this regard, we see Glenn Greenwald screaming bloody murder about it.

In response to this, someone decided to shake ol Glenn up just a bit, by sending him a letter, or so Greenwald claims…

The issues of accuracy, context, and proper characterization is something that perhaps you could do a little research and would assume you are aware of as a trained lawyer.

I do enjoy reading your diatribes as they provide comic relief here in Iraq. The amount of pure fiction is incredible. Since a great deal of this post is just opinion and everyone is entitled to their opinions, I will not address those even though they are shall we say — based on few if any facts. That does surprise me with your training as a lawyer, but we will leave those jokes to another day. . . .

You are either too lazy to do the research on the topics to gain the facts, or you are providing purposeful misinformation — much like a propagandist. . . .

Sorry to burst your bubble, but a little actual research on your part would have shown that [Cheney P.R. aide Steve Schmidt] is actually not here, but that would contradict your conspiracy theory. . . . .

I am curious as to when you think the media relations or operations changed here in Iraq. I in fact do know exactly the day and time that it changed and want to see if you are even in the same ballpark as reality. . . .

For the third matter concerning the Beauchamp investigation and the documents that were leaked — it is very unfortunate that they were — but the documents are not secret or classified. So, there is your third major error in fact. Good thing you are not a journalist. . . .

As for working in secret with only certain media is laughable. The wide swatch of media engagements is by far the most diverse it could be. But you might not think it that way since we chose not to do an interview with you. You are not a journalist nor do you have any journalistic ethical standards as we found out from the last time I engaged with you.

As we quickly found out, you published our email conversation without asking, without permission — just another case in point to illustrate your lack of standards and ethics. You may recall that a 30-minute interview was conducted with the program that you claim to be a contributor. So instead of doing the interview with you, we went with the real talent, Alan Colmes. . . .

I invite you to come see for yourself and go anywhere in Iraq you want, go see what our forces are doing, go see what the other coalition forces are doing, go hang out with the reporters outside the International Zone since that is where they live and work and see for yourself what ground truth is so that you can be better informed. But that would take something you probably don’t have.

Steve

Steven A. Boylan

Colonel, US Army

Public Affairs Officer

OK, with that as a background, we can now have a little fun. Says Greenwald, in a huff:

Everyone can decide for themselves if that sounds more like an apolitical, professional military officer or an overwrought right-wing blogger throwing around all sorts of angry, politically charged invective.

Not that you’re an overwrought far-left-wing blogger throwing around all sorts of angry, politically charged invective, huh, Glenn? (Aside… ya know were I gettin’ spanked that hard, I dunno as I’d be bragging about it like Greenwald is, here.)

As usual, of course Greenwald only has half the facts, if that.We’ll leave all the guesswork and just pure nonsense by the side of the road, because as we go on here, it will become clear that Greenwald is either falling for a scam, or is behind behind this scam himself… with some serious help, of course… Trouble is, he’s so far off on his facts, and clearly so bad with the technology…

UPDATE: For obvious reasons, several commenters have questioned the authenticity of the e-mail. The email address from which it was sent is the same (iraq.centcom.mil) email address as Col. Boylan used to send his prior emails (not knowing if that address is public or private, I didn’t include it in the full e-mail I published in order to prevent him from receiving a deluge of emails).  Additionally, all of the adornments (titles and pre-programmed signature lines and the like) and formatting are identical. Most convincingly (to me), Col. Boylan has, as I noticed during my prior email exchange with him, a — how shall we say? — idiosyncratic grammatical style that is quite recognizable though difficult to replicate, and the e-mail I received this morning — from start to finish — is written in exactly that style. I don’t see any reason at all to doubt its authenticity.

OK, we’ll wait 30 seconds.

UPDATE II: If you are well-versed in analyzing IP addresses, email headers and the like, please email me ([email protected]).

Yes, I thought so. He really doesn’t know what he’s on about, and despite his bravado, has no proof of what he’s saying. So, like agood little liberal, he continues to dig a bigger hole for himself:

UPDATE III: The following email exchange has now ensued with Col. Boylan:

GG to Col. Boylan:

Col. Boylan – Could you just confirm that this email [email forwarded] is authentic, written by and sent from you?  Thanks –

Glenn Greenwald

Col. Boylan to GG:

Glenn, Interesting email and no. Why do you ask?

Steven

GG to Col. Boylan:

Only because it comes from your email address, is written in your name, and bears all of the same distinguishing features as the last emails you sent to me: [email protected]

Did you really not notice that?

Col. Boylan to GG:

Well, since they were on the web, not surprising. If you do a search on the web, you will also see that I have been a victim of identity theft of late in Vermont and at least two other places trying to rent property and that person identified themselves as me and thankfully the State Police were able to get in touch with me about it while I am sitting here in Baghdad.

GG to Col. Boylan:

Well isn’t it of great concern to you that someone is able to send out emails using your military email address? Do you plan to look into that? And you labelled the email I recieved “interesting.” What does that mean? Do you agree with its content, have any comments about it?

I’ll post more as I receive it.

UPDATE IV: After a crash course in tracing email headers and IP addresses and the like, the following appears to be the tracking information for the original email I received this morning from the email Col. Boylan is claiming is fake:

Return-Path: Received: from 02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil

(02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil [214.13.200.111]) by rich.salon.com (8.12.11/8.12.11) with ESMTP id l9SBFSff004148 for ;

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 04:15:36 -0700

Received: from INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.11]) by 02exbhizn02.iraq.centcom.mil with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:15:05 +0300 Received: from INTZEXEVSIZN02.iraq.centcom.mil ([10.70.20.16]) by INTZEXEBHIZN01.iraq.centcom.mil with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 14:15:05 +0300

From: “Boylan, Steven COL MNF-I CMD GRP CG PAO”

To: ([email protected])

X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Oct 2007 11:15:05.0804 (UTC) FILETIME=[CAF430C0:01C81953]

The IP address — 10.70.20.11 — does not appear to be recognizable from various IP locator programs.

Well, Glenn, ol sod, whoever gave you that crash course oughta give you your money back.

10.*.*.* is a PRIVATE network. It’s called a Class A network, and is often used by private industry. Such addresses live behind a POP and a router.  You clearly did no research whatever on the matter, or your first stop would have been Wikipedia, wherein we find:

private network is a network that uses RFC 1918 IP address space. Computers may be allocated addresses from this address space when it is necessary for them to communicate with other computing devices on an internal network (non-Internet).

Private networks are becoming quite common in office local area network (LAN) designs, as many organizations do not see a need for globally unique IP addresses for every computer, printer and other device that the organizations use. Another reason for the extensive use of private IP addresses is the shortage of publicly registered IP addresses. IPv6 was created to alleviate this shortage, but is yet to be in widespread use.

Routers on the Internet are (normally) configured to discard any traffic using private IP addresses. This isolation gives private networks a basic form of security as it is not usually possible for the outside world to establish a connection directly to a machine using these addresses. As connections cannot be made between different private networks via the internet, different organizations can use the same private address range without risking address conflicts (communications accidentally reaching third party which is using the same IP address).

If a device on a private network needs to communicate with other networks it is necessary for a “mediating gateway” to ensure that the outside network is presented with an address that is “real” (or publicly reachable) so that routers allow the communication. Typically this gateway will be a network address translation (NAT) device or a proxy server.

This can cause problems, however, when organizations try to connect networks that both use private address spaces. There is the potential for clashes and routing problems if both networks use the same IP addresses for their private networks, or rely on NAT to connect them through the Internet.

The current private internet addresses are:

In short, there are likely a million different networks operating in the same address range as the one you think is coming from Iraq. Good luck proving it came from there… or for that matter proving it didn’t.  I myself operate several such networks, and another few in the 192.*.*.* range.

Further, Glenn if you knew thing one about the computer, the keyboard of which you drool into daily, you’d know about open mail ports, and their hacking uses. I mean, these are all facts that could have been found by you with about 30 seconds worth of investigation. You didn’t bother.  Apparently, you just followed your jerking knee, instead.

And Glenn? As for..

(Franklin Foer noted “a months-long pattern by which the Army has leaked information and misinformation to conservative bloggers while failing to help us with simple requests for documents”).

You have got to be kidding me. Foer was frozen because he couldn’t respond without transcripts of a conversation he was party to originally? Give it a rest, this stuff ain’t selling.

Pathetic.

BBCT: Memeorandum

(See updates in Greenwald, again)