A Second Hand Conjecture

I was over at Patterico’s this evening and what do I see?

I swear I’m not making this up:

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

If you don’t get the irony, you must not have read this.

Of course for those who chuckle over the paranoid conspiracy theorists misadventures with donning the cloth there are other delicious ironies:

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.

Well, good day sir!

Oh well. I have no idea whether Col. Boylan sent the e-mail which has the dishonest hack’s knitting in a wad, but this was pretty amusing as well:

On a different note, John Cole highlights the key point here that should not be lost. Independent of the authenticity of the first email, Col. Boylan’s subsequent emails to me were snide, hostile and nonresponsive (”What I am doing about it does not concern you”). Whatever else one might think about the views I have expressed, I don’t think anyone can say I was anything but professional and civil in all of my interactions with him, yet his responses today were roughly the same as the ones encountered by The New Republic: arrogant and obstructionist stonewalling (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”).

 

Let us ignore the dishonest characterization of the entire Beauchamp matter which has been part and parcel of everything the fraying foot garment has written on the matter, including the ridiculous charge that the military has been keeping the information from The New Republic, and concentrate on he and John Cole’s characterization of Greenwald’s manner. I find this frankly amazing. This very post is a long diatribe (after many others) accusing Col. Boyland and his commander, General Petraeus, of being nothing more than liars and propagandists. Please, none of you familiar with the ravings of the most well known piece of talking footwear should fall over at this irony, because he has the goods. General Petraeus was invited to speak and give the key elements of his presentation on Fox News! Yes, he did. He did it without all kinds of questions along the lines of “why are you lying to us general?” As the argyle clad one says, Pravda would be proud. Of course, now that it turns out all the ravings of the sock people were wrong, and General Petraeus right, we might suggest that not only is allowing someone to make their case directly, and without editing, to the people of our country a perfectly legitimate use of the airways, they might have been showing editorial judgment of a more reasoned nature than our friends who grovel at Greenwald’s …uh… foot?

However, I digress. My point is that nothing in the post, or the posts addressing the activities of General Petraeus and his aides, has been in any way civil. But John Cole and he are offended that he is less than pleasant in his responses and unleashed snideness! Which as you see has great import, in fact it highlights the key point! Let me reproduce another of these vicious body blows of snideness:

Interesting email and no. Why do you ask?

Shudder. I can see why the sock with eyes is so shattered. He accuses the man and his office of fraud, lying and all manner of dishonesty and Col. Boylan responds with such overkill.

I am interested in this issue. What I am doing about it does not concern you. Interesting is what I find it.

Whether I agree with what the email says or not is not an issue I wish to discuss with you, as I decided after our last exchange that I would not take the time or efforts to engage with you.

Is there a reason why you posted this?

I suspect with snideness like that we should have the man court martialed.

The sad thing is that people still turn to this man and parrot his arguments on the subject of our Generals and the veracity of their statements despite his poor track record. For an example of that I give you this golden oldie for your reading pleasure, the head lemming of the sock puppet herds discussion of Anbar in May. Now realize that at the time the improvements in Anbar had been being covered by many (Yes, we would include ourselves in that many) for quite awhile. Reading this piece however one would think it was some brand new turn of events selectively leaked to the gullible Joe Klein from the masters of propaganda that Petraues and his goons are:

Q. If you’re a Bush administration official and you want to create a prominent headline in Time Magazine proclaiming what great improvement there is in Iraq, what do you do?

A. Have someone with a shiny military uniform go and flatter Joe Klein by whispering “secrets” in his ear all while demanding anonymity, and then he’ll dutifully run to the pages of Time and mindlessly repeat what he’s been told as though he has discovered some great journalistic scoop, which is how Time will treat it.

What was this disinformation masquerading as a scoop? Why, the Anbar awakening! Guess what, it was a fraud! Or, at least that is what we find out from reading a man who has obviously been closely following what was happening in Iraq. Oh and get this choice little gem:

As always, the very idea of granting anonymity to government sources to do nothing other than repeat pro-government claims is both manipulative and moronic on its face.

Good thing we have brave men like Franklin Foer at The New Republic who would never print stories by an anonymous source without fact checking it extensively. Heh, well I guess it just depends on the message, even if in this case Joe Klein had some evidence to corroborate the claims being made about Anbar and the troubles al Qaida in Iraq was having. So how does our sock with eyes characterize what was happening in Anbar? It is a

…short-term and isolated lull in violence…

And we should not be

Pointing to three-day lapses in violence in a single place as proof that things are improving is so transparently irrational that, particularly at this point, it merits as much response as the desperate claim that anyone who opposes the war “wants the U.S. to lose.”

So irrational. Three days?I guess we are to assume ignoring a trend that was at the time actually at minimum an eight month is the height of rationality, and now that it has been an improving trend in Anbar for over a year now it is probably even more irrational. In his defense, despite opining with great certainty that Iraq

has inexorably descended into total chaos and violence. (ed. a bit of hyperbole, even then)

he has shown repeatedly, even when things were getting worse, that he has little knowledge of what is actually happening. I am sure he was pretty much unaware, or had totally dismissed out of hand, and therefore out of mind, any reports to the contrary. Three days, eight months, who cares to count when all outcomes are known in advance?

Of course we get to hear from him how evil out of touch men such as Glenn Reynolds are for bringing in the views of men who are actually in Iraq:

Glenn Reynolds defends Joe Klein and “responds” to my post by (a) accusing me of rooting for the U.S. to lose and (b) re-printing an e-mail he received from Michael Yon who claims that, in Anbar, “the guns are mostly quiet now” and the Infantry Task Force with which he is embedded “hardly have fired their weapons.” Yon claims that things are so peachy in Anbar that the meetings of the Task Force are “more administrative than combat oriented.”

I think I detect a bit of snideness there. Can we cherish another little bit of irony? First of all Glenn, a bit of clarification. Mr. Reynolds says you wish for Bush to lose, I think Mr. Reynolds thinks you view the rest of us losing along the way as mere collateral damage. You know, more rubble less trouble?

I don’t know if it is just me, but given the sock puppets attitude and unwillingness to admit any progress in Iraq to this very day, that the charge that he wants us to lose is true, whatever his motivation. Someone who wants us to win, but believes our course is foolish would welcome and acknowledge that things have changed. He might even praise General Petraeus and our troops for accomplishing much even though you still feel the invasion was a mistake. One might say that Iraq hasn’t in fact continued sliding into total chaos and violence. One could do that even as one still feels the cost is too high to incur given the possibility of reversals. What you wouldn’t do is savage the men bringing the good news unless you felt it wasn’t good news, and that good news had to not only be claimed as inadequate to change your mind, but actually denied and its bearers portrayed as liars and charlatans. That may just be me however because my understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of society at my local clothing bin is a bit weak.

Glenn Greenwald is a disgrace, and whatever the failings of Col. Boylan I cannot but help share his disdain.

And Mr. Rick Ellensburg or Wilson, or Greenwald or whoever you wish to go by, when I say you are dishonest, paranoid and a propagandist, I mean it in the most civil and professional way.

See Also: Jules Crittenden, Weasel Zippers, The Van Der Galien Gazette, Blue Crab Boulevard and Bithead (who looks into the e-mail controversy.)

Oh, and please visit our Glenn Greenwald Carnival of Fisking.

Update: Eric Scheie looks into the whole premise of the Sock Puppet’s Right-wing blogger/military collusion. On a related note I also refer your to McQ’s post on the military’s bloggers roundtables.

Ouch! I have been smacked by the mini puppet Mona. This despite the fact she has said she would never stop by again, and given the haphazard slap it is certainly possible she didn’t read the post. It seems she is upset because some have taken Greenwald to task for eliminating salient points of the e-mail from his post. Her response is that he linked to the e-mail in its entirety, which while it doesn’t answer the critique (which is about the editing he did, not whether someone who bothered to read the whole thing could find what he deleted) is something that she is correct to emphasize. Anyway, why that criticism has anything to do with my post I have no idea, but it is nice to know we are now “wingnut morons” for not being guilty of the supposed sin addressed of not noticing the link, or not comprehending it. Of course we are not only “wingnut morons, ” we are now keepers of the neo-con faith! Why she has us there. Did you hear that everybody, I AM A NEO-CON! Good thing we have such people as she and her master to supply us with a rational, non-vacuous form of debate what with insightful, nuanced uses of the word NEO-CON and Wingnut Moron. We wouldn’t want to trivialize our oh so hoity toity selves with anything less than such dignified forms of argumentation:

This apparently went unread, unnoticed and/or uncomprehended by the insightful keepers of the neocon faith, who used this non-misrepresentation of anything by Greenwald as another excuse to spew vacuous venom at him.

As you see, in the careful and precise world of sock puppets and their sycophants, it is the height of non-vacuousness to claim someone uses as an excuse something which was never mentioned.

That is called “Reality Based.” Heh, well I am appropriately chastised now for having not claimed something and used this lack of a claim to spew vacuous venom. Believe me, mini-me and her overlord know the meaning of venom, though it is always professional and civil venom. Though we might mention that this little passage is in fact a misrepresentation of me, though it is certainly not done vacuously.

I will accept the vacuous (but fun!) part as an essential truth of parts of the post, but he didn’t misrepresent anything? Well, I would like to see a substantive argument as to how he didn’t misrepresent what I have claimed he did, or any of the non-vacuous parts of the post, especially the way the sock puppet army squares his smears based on supposed lies (not that he ever had a smidgen of proof that they were lies, not that there wasn’t copious evidence of the claims he disputed being true) which have turned out to be true. That non-vacuous topic has yet to be addressed, and certainly the blatant error of the claims the sock puppet made (and mini me as well) on this particular point have never elicited any apology to those so smeared.

Of course, I have it on good authority from a certain person within the sock puppet camp that despite the brilliance of the talking sock, he is wholly unable to admit error. If I ever track that source down (ahem) I might ask them about this trait and shouldn’t he be called on it on at least the reputation of Joe Klein and Petraeus on the issue of Anbar’s turnaround? From there we might work on a few other smears, but one must start somewhere. When one has such an awful disability it is best to take it one step at a time.

More piling on: The Jawa Report, Bookworm Room, The Dread Pundit Bluto, Wake Up Americans.

Update 10:30 PM CST 10/29: Now I do not consider myself petty, but some things are just too fun to avoid, and the Greenwald and his pet are one indulgence I gleefully allow myself. I think it has to do with the fact that no two people I come across come close to being as vicious, and completely devoid of humor, as them. So for the five or so of you who also find getting in petty blog spats with these eccentric and oh so serious characters amusing, please let me quote the dear Mona’s latest “clarification.”

In response to neolibertarian Lance at A Second Hand Conjecture — linked above in the word “excuse” — and to set the record straight, I never claimed I wouldn’t read that blog evermore; I said I would not comment.

Now you poor dear, unlike you, I would not presume to tell you what you meant. That is the purview of you and your master who specialize in telling people what they really mean. Thus our world is populated with people who desire little more than murdering millions and desiring oceans of blood (for the uninitiated, yes, that is what she thinks the dreaded neo-cons, which in sock puppet world is a much larger group than you would think, really want. You might think she was indulging in hyperbole, but no, she has assured me she is serious.) So do not worry dear, I will not tell you you meant anything different than that. What you said however is a different matter:

I will do the same, and shall not show up here again.

So long.

So pardon us for being confused. I will let you in on a secret though, I did not believe you would whatever you meant;^)

I will give you another helpful hint as well. “So long” is so pedestrian. The proper Greenwaldian etiquette demands a full throated “Good Day sir!”

ASHC was included at memeorandum (as evidenced by my link to memorandum) under the stupid Bluto post supposedly “taking down” Greenwald. Lance includes Bluto in his approving listing of blog commentary on the Boylan/Greenwald email.

A standard ploy of the Greenwaldians, the approving link. Funny, I thought they were just links. Did I embed some code in them to signal this? Get this Mona, I often just link to a bunch of posts, including those that out and out disagree with me, sans any editorial intent. The only criteria for this list was they were making fun of your favorite sock puppet. The weird thing is, how does my approval or lack thereof bear on anything? This is another Greenwaldian technique. You say something with earnestness as if it has some import. I must assume the lazy reader assumes some important point is being made, that there is some logical merit to the comment. That the fact I approve of the link must have some bearing on what is being argued, when in fact it has no logical bearing at all.

I read what Lance had to say. None of it merited a substantive response.

More classic Greenwaldian argumentation. When caught with ones pants down, be dismissive. You smear people, are proven completely wrong, and you just act as if the subject is not worth discussing because only pedestrian minds would concern themselves with such trivia as smears based upon error. Always keep the guns pointed forward, no need to look back and evaluate, especially if it means taking back the nasty things you have said about others.

Well, I disagree. Greenwald has repeatedly argued we shouldn’t listen to people who were wrong before, which is a pretty stupid standard. So, while error really should be understood and given some forbearance despite his assertion, it is less forgivable when the error was not about the future, but about facts you just don’t want to hear that have already happened. It is all the less tolerable when you deny those facts you don’t want to hear and claim the persons giving them to you are liars and unethical propagandists. Personally I think that merits a substantive response.

Lance writes really quite well

The casual compliment to set yourself up as reasonable before you stick in the shiv:

unfortunately he is intellectually captive to Michael Ledeen and the likeminded. Hence the analytical deficiencies in many of his posts.

Neatly done. Now, those of you who do not know our dear Mona, close friend and confidant of the head sock puppet, may not recognize this for what it is. See, in the world of the Greenwaldians Ledeen is no mere person they disagree with. He is a genocidal maniac. Yes, he wishes to spill the blood of millions. They are not even content with the claim that he approaches such a possibility casually. No, he gets off on it according to these two. So that is the brush she is painting me with in her fantasy. I am a crazed neo-con warrior in thrall to Michael Ledeen. In her world pointing out what a vicious smear her characterization of Ledeen is means I am intellectually captive to him, or at minimum it is what she wants her readers to believe so that they never stop to think about what her critics are pointing out.

Now readers here would probably find that characterization ridiculous considering the relatively small overlap between his views and mine, and frankly Michael himself would find the notion ridiculous, but it allows Mona to divert her readers from facing the problems with Glenn Greenwald and Mona’s entire approach to politics. Which, as she has admitted, is “take no prisoners.” Once in her sights the only choice is to shoot to kill. Niceties such as acknowledging the vicious smear she and the sock puppet indulged in last May (not that that smear is the worst, and they have a long list) have no place in such a worldview. You line your victims against the wall and fire. No point in ever checking to see if they were innocent, or you guilty. It is a war after all. We vacuous wingnut morons however are likely to miss their civil and professional subtleties.

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