Patterico's Pontifications

10/28/2007

Quote of the Day

Filed under: Buffoons,Humor — Patterico @ 5:17 pm



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 (GGreenwald@salon.com).

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

UPDATE: Runner up for quote of the day, also from Rick Ellensburg:

The IP addresses appear to be the same. There’s a whole industry of IP address theories around and I’m the last person who is going to claim any expertise in that.

Indeed.

UPDATE x2: Thanks to Glenn Reynolds for the link, and welcome to Instapundit readers. Please take a second to bookmark and visit the main page.

75 Responses to “Quote of the Day”

  1. I’ve always loved that post…

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  2. What’s your take on the substance of all that? Seems like an inappropriate communication from a military spokesman if real, but I can’t make heads or tails of the header history stuff.

    Stace (2ca426)

  3. It’s Greenie… Making heads or tails of anything he writes is an exercise in futility.

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  4. The irony is fantastic. I saw the item earlier and wanted to point it out to you. One guess is that a lot of Colonels share the same computer over in Iraq and they all have Glenn’s number. Surely Glenn can appreciate that explaination. He’s just wounded by the tone and content of the e-mail.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  5. As I’ve often tried to tell people playing a certain role playing game “why respond to obvious lies? You merely give them attention. Best to let them fade away on their own…”

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  6. Oh, that’s so funny, I may hurt myself laughing.

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  7. Glen who?

    Al (b624ac)

  8. Everything thing in the Colonel’s e-mail was spot on. He should not have denied sending it.

    packsoldier (b9acee)

  9. Zing!

    Paul (66339f)

  10. Glen who?

    Aw snap!

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  11. Evidently Greenwald thinks any disagreement with his work is ‘hysteria.’ Does he even read his own work, or is it just spewed out without thought?

    Nevermind.

    JorgXMcKie (4068d7)

  12. Now be honest, can you think of anyone who needs that information? Sadly he is a little late to really help himself.

    Fritz (89333b)

  13. Two things – Seixon’s archive is no longer available but Jason Leopold was stealing peoples IP-email info garnered from email exchanges with them and then sending emails in their names to others, including peeps at lefty Raw Story – ” Here is a post about it.

    Second, Life imitates…Glenn Greenwald. Glenn’s never has been able to keep up with his positions, but I guess when those positions change when the wind blows it difficult for even Glenn to keep up….

    I kid you not, but this is Glenn’s 10,000 word opus railing against TNR’s having taken 1 of a few of the Townhouse emails as real…

    He asks ” Does The New Republic have a new Stephen Glass in Jason Zengerle?”

    Zengerle owes his readers and The New Republic an explanation, and soon. Did Zengerle really have three sources for these e-mails (as he claimed), or did he simply receive things from an anonymous source and then blindly rely on the veracity of what he was sent, only to claim that it was from “three sources” in order (a la Jason Leopold) to enhance the credibility of his claims? Or, a la Stephen Glass, did Zengerle simply fabricate e-mails in order to bolster his “story”?

    Got that…bad TNR for blindly relying on the veracity of some of the Townhouse emails and then Glenn accuses TNR of fabricating the emails – and today? Glenn hearts TNR!

    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”

    Glenn is a fricken caricature of himself.

    Topsecretk9 (e43747)

  14. Why is GG surprised that a military officer treats those who are respectful and supportive of him with respect and support, and those that are disrespectful and contemptuous with disrepect and contempt.

    As GG has pointed out, he does not consider himself bound by journalistic conventions when dealing with the military, so why should they deal with any form of conventions when dealing with him?

    gahrie (56a0a8)

  15. Also, there are like 100 ironies to be found in 10/28/2007 @ 6:53 pm

    Topsecretk9 (e43747)

  16. As GG has pointed out, he does not consider himself bound by journalistic conventions when dealing with the military, so why should they deal with any form of conventions when dealing with him?

    This opens up options such as carpet bombing his home and office, and I find this idea fascinates me…

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  17. Someone so influential as Glenn Greenwald, what with his opinions being read on the Senate floor, surely doesn’t need to go to the filthy masses and ask them for help to find him a geek?

    chaos (9c54c6)

  18. I don’t think anyone can say I was anything but professional and civil in all of my interactions with him

    WOW. It takes balls to lie like that.

    TallDave (5a4047)

  19. I’m surprised his chief sycophant hasn’t popped in to defend him yet.

    dave (04dde8)

  20. This opens up options such as carpet bombing his home and office, and I find this idea fascinates me…

    OK, I have to condemn that, because if I don’t, it becomes Exhibit A in his newest litany of right-wing hate speech.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  21. In fairness, I should note the runners-up for quote of the day:

    There’s a whole industry of IP address theories around and I’m the last person who is going to claim any expertise in that.

    and

    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.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  22. Fair enough… I will admit that it is over the top.

    Maybe a psy-op involving blaring Sean’s and Rush’s radio programs outside his house?

    Would that be better? 🙂

    Scott Jacobs (a1de9d)

  23. I have to admit this was my first choice:

    … idiosyncratic grammatical style that is quite recognizable though difficult to replicate …

    It may not be as funny as your quote-of-the-day but it certainly tickled my funny bone.

    DRJ (5c60fb)

  24. Patterico,

    Too late! You were strangely silent for an entire four minutes, four minutes in which you no doubt wished Glenn, Ellers, Wilson, and everyone else at his house terrible harm. Meanwhile, no one can say Glenn has been anything but the most reasonable, honest, evenhanded person alive for at least the last ten years.

    TallDave (5a4047)

  25. Greenwald doesn’t take criticism well and the mystery e-mail absolutely nailed him. Glenn’s obsession with taking down Bush, publicly expressed on his blog, makes him confuse any discussion of Iraq military strategy with political speech because in his view the war is entirely Bush’s war. It is those ideological blinders that frame his entire writing history.

    The earlier e-mail exhange with Boylan which Greenwald links to in his post was obnoxious, unprofessional and over the top. As Boylan explains, he decided not to engage further with Greenwald after that exchange. Based on Glenn’s aggressive and offensive sense of entitlement expressed in those e-mails and veiled allegations of misconduct, I completely understand Boylan’s attitude.

    Greenwald’s response is particularly delicious today where he mangles the facts about the TNR/Beauchamp matter, complains about matters the mystery e-mailer chose not to address, and repeated allegations about leaks to right wing blogs – bad leaks as opposed to good leaks. It must suck to feel so important.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  26. I’ll point out another Leopold cowinky dink – he was working for Salon when he produced a bogus email purported to be from Army Secretary Thomas White being involved with Enron. When White said the email was not his they retracted and yada yada yada

    Topsecretk9 (e43747)

  27. Glenn is a fricken caricature of himself.

    [Topsecretk9 — 10/28/2007 @ 6:53 pm]

    Um, more like Glenn is three fricken caricatures of himself.

    Dusty (dd1df5)

  28. “LOL” — literally.

    Patterico (bad89b)

  29. I finally got around to this posting and I am hours separated from the active discussion but I am still going to put in my two cents here.

    First off if those bloaters of ideological crap ever had taken the chance to talk to whatever meager IT staff they may have this would be a non issue. If they are trying to run major (in their own mind) activities off a public blog community they don’t even have a clue as to what alternatives are available out in the real world.

    But for those clued in to the ip and what it means world we know their are readily available tools , even free ware down loadable utilities that will take the effort out of decrypting the headers contained in emails.

    They will clearly sort out all the chain of custody transfers and even put it into a graphic format if you so wish.

    But the much more important capability the will sound the alarm when an email header and the tracing of the path screams at you that they either came up with a non valid ip address for a mail handler daemon or any jumps between ip addresses that at the time of the email are not in the router address base for authorized paths under the netsat map of all the out in the real world paths available per the peering of all the networks and ISP’s per the Border Gate Protocol published routing maps.

    Yeah I know that is a bunch of tech wizard words but what it boils down to is that by how the net is structured it picks up that you cant get from point a to point b like the email headers says in the bogus message route it shows.

    All the mail servers and routing paths are known, anything that throws up a variation as a non known mail forwarder is probed to see if a mail server is in existence at the alleged point on the net and sample test messages are thrown through it if an alien server is detected.

    Mail has a path it can travel, if it violates any points in the full path involved it is flagged and then looks carefully for where the bogus point of transfer is and sees if someone is hijacking the mail stream or just what is up.

    daytrader (ea6549)

  30. Greenwald has a funny choice of clients. Previously he had the neo-nazi white supremacist
    attorney want to be, judge threatening, Matt Hale.
    Now he sticks up for the equivalent side for the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mohammed Al Quahtani, et al; in their goals to destroy American cities and bring about Sharia law; basically the same goals conducted through different ends.

    narciso (d671ab)

  31. Daytrader

    Can you make a “for dummies” version of 8:22 pm? Pretty please – Glenn needs your HALP!

    Topsecretk9 (e43747)

  32. To make mail work, each mail server announces to the routing gods of the world who it will accept mail transfers from and who it will pass them on to.

    That is a hard and fast net node structure that will not be broken by common agreement to prevent anarchy on the web and endless circular loops.

    The simple violations of that node structure stand out like a sore thumb.

    daytrader (ea6549)

  33. Top – Bitsblog has something on it. I’m not good at the cut and paste.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  34. Comment #14 is quite clearly the best comment on this thread. The author must be a genius, and I would not be surprised to find that he has been quoted on the Senate floor.

    gairie (56a0a8)

  35. The home base mail god arbitrator analyzes the whole path structure before it changes are made to the net routing messages going out and insures mainly two things but many others

    1) there are no circular paths or nodes to nowhere

    2) there are no paths that will result in duplication of messages via clone paths

    daytrader (ea6549)

  36. Thanks daleyrocks – I read a little bit ago.

    Topsecretk9 (e43747)

  37. TS9

    I could send him the crayon on etchAsketch version of version and he would still not get it.

    It is simply beyond his grasp.

    I don’t do Sesame Street to well.

    But I view that as a plus rather than a minus.

    daytrader (ea6549)

  38. “What’s your take on the substance of all that? Seems like an inappropriate communication from a military spokesman if real, but I can’t make heads or tails of the header history stuff.”

    It doesn’t matter. All that counts is that it came from Greenwald, and if you don’t think that’s enough of an argument, then you just don’t appreciate a good ad hominem when you see one.

    Dr Rick (e9224f)

  39. Looks like Patraeus needs a perkier spokesmodel.

    alphie (99bc18)

  40. ROFL – oh, that was even more hilarious.

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  41. Dr. Rick, ad hominem? “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. “

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  42. I don’t know if it’s funny, SPQR.

    The Colonel is talking like he has a reserved seat in the AEI soup kitchen.

    Gonna be quite a scramble in a few months.

    alphie (99bc18)

  43. Alf – You’re making the assumption it is in fact the Colonel who wrote the e-mail. That is by no means clear.

    Maybe Greenwald could ask his buddy Feingold to read it on the floor of the Senate to help get to the bottom of it. Whoever wrote it sure laid down a righteous spanking on that preening pretentious prick’s ass.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  44. Well, a few days ago Scott Beauchamp had to go out alone in his unarmored mine detecting humvee… which was weird, because why waste a humvee when you could just send the guy out alone to buy a handful of dates and have the same sniper that terminated Tillman for his dissent shoot him (so ghostlike that sniper)if he could get to him before the jihadis.. but I digress.
    Mr. Colonel or his sockpuppet spoke the wrong truth to the wrong power ripping time, space and physics to shreds in the parlor with the candlestick.
    MNF-I will never recover and Petraeus has again been exposed as a tool of the Cheney administration.

    SteveG (4e16fc)

  45. Alphie, yes it is funny to see you fall like a Gleen.

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  46. Steve, you do more than digress, you are just repeating conspiracy theories without any basis in reality.

    SPQR (6c18fd)

  47. I imagine there will be quite a few Congressional investigations coming up, daley.

    Let’s hope the colonel remembers his Miss Manners.

    alphie (99bc18)

  48. With a shorter Congressional work week, I wonder how they will squeeze the investigations all in. Then again, I remind myself they are not accomplishing much of anything else so what’s the difference.

    daleyrocks (906622)

  49. ohhhhhh

    Congressional investigations… what an international embarrassment those things have become.

    Waxman babbles on endlessly, skeptically and no one cares anymore…. and it has only been 9 months. He defines the term “partisan hack”
    What’s next on the liberal wish list, don’t say lemme guess… a special prosecutor than can’t find anything but his/her own perjury trap?
    Americans on both sides are tired of this brand of BS…

    SPQR…

    “no basis in reality”? my source inhabits an unimpeachable reality and I demand a retraction before I have my congressperson Lois Capps request that my near neighbor Henry investigate your tax returns… for the children

    SteveG (4e16fc)

  50. I don’t know about that, SteveG.

    I rather enjoy the endless Congressional hearings.

    And since when did the far right care what the “international” community thinks about America?

    alphie (99bc18)

  51. Greenwald:

    That takes us back to the first and most important point — the U.S. military, which has an obligation to conduct itself apolitically and professionally, appears in many cases to be doing exactly the opposite.

    Oh no! Soldiers going all political! I didn’t see Greenwald whining about that when Beauchamp was taking TNR for a ride. I would say that counts as quite the ironic statement by itself.

    Oh, and apparently he has been getting some poor help when it comes to IP addresses. 10.70.20.11 is a local IP address, Mr. Ellensburg, you moron.

    Seixon (a99b03)

  52. Lets fix GG’s quote:
    That takes us back to the first and most important point — journalism, which has an obligation to conduct itself apolitically and professionally, appears in many cases to be doing exactly the opposite.

    GG is lost in his self-importance fantasy that a US Army Colonel should take time out of his busy day to play semantic games with an idiot half a world away.

    Perfect Sense (b6ec8c)

  53. Since giving him the information would be ‘enabling’, like giving an alcoholic the directions to the local liquor store, I’d recommend against it.

    jpm100 (d5518b)

  54. I wonder if Greenwald is as interested in “validating” the “authenticity” of his e-mails as he is in spoofing the addresses of his cabana-boy sock-puppets to make them seem more “authentic”.

    After all: It must be terribly frustrating for a self-proclaimed Super-Genius like Wile E. Gleen to be caught out by those meddling right-wing troglodytes….

    Challeron (34e8c4)

  55. And btw: What’s with all the preening over having one’s remarks read out on the Senate floor? The Democrats had a brain-damaged 12-year-old give their weekly radio address; wasn’t Gleen(s) qualified even for that?

    Challeron (34e8c4)

  56. Poor little Rick Ellisonbergwald is all mad that someone treated him – Glenn Greenwald, genius, quoted-in-the-Senate intellectual luminary of our times! – with contempt in an e-mail, maybe he needs a hug from his partner who was going around defending Ricky on blogs from the same computer with telling poor Ricky.

    chaos (2a6b46)

  57. Nice to see the sewer worker chime in!

    Or not. I guess knowledge of TCP/IP protocals is an on again off again thing eh Pat?

    Davebo (43d071)

  58. I think GG has been pretty consistent in his ignorance of TCP/IP protocols.

    chaos (2a6b46)

  59. “Oh, and apparently he has been getting some poor help when it comes to IP addresses. 10.70.20.11 is a local IP address, Mr. Ellensburg, you moron.”

    Yeah, that was my first thought when he posted that info. “Well, no wonder you can’t find it in an IP locater program, you dimbulb. 10.* is a _private_ IP address field. I can give that to my home computer _right now_.”

    Dave (53e5ec)

  60. If anyone could sniff out a spoof, it’s Gleen. where in the Man Book of Rules does it read that INDIVIDUAL soldiers have to be apolitical? Or the UCMJ for that matter. Sock puppets and strawmen too, Oh My!!

    Bill M (ee2ae1)

  61. How dare anyone out there make fun of Glenn after all he has been through?! He hasn’t been read on the Senate floor for ages. That Feingold might just as well be another guy he met in a bar who promised to call and never did. Leave him alone!! All he cares about is pointing out the evils of the inhuman government who won’t let him bring his Brazilian boyfriend to America on a fiancee visa. HE’S A HUMAN! What you don’t realize is that all sockpuppetry was the work of that evil, manipulative bitch Mona who has been trying to steal him away from my his boyfriend not because she loves him but just to advance her own career. His bestselling book was bought by every reader on his blog but all you want is MORE . . . MORE . . . MORE, MORE, MORE! LEAVE HIM ALONE! You are lucky he even talks about you BASTARDS! LEAVE RICK GLENN ALONE!! Please. Leave Glenn Alone. Please . . . Leave Glenn alone . . . right now . . . I mean it. Anyone that has a problem with him you deal with me, because he is not well right now. Leave him alone.

    Leave Glenn alone.

    Not Rick Ellensburg (7aed24)

  62. alf

    I think it is an embarrassment all the way up the ladderto the universe in case anyone is out there too
    I apologize if I led you to think I speaking for all conservatives when I was intending to speak only for myself. I’d assumed that was obvious, but now I see you didn’t understand.
    Next time I’ll try to be more clear about who I speak for… you may find it helpful to note this… i’ll pretty much always be speaking for myself.
    Thanks

    SteveG (4e16fc)

  63. This is too good:

    UPDATE IV: After a crash course in tracing email headers and IP addresses and the like
    . . .
    All three of those sets of emails came from the same IP address — 10.70.20.11 — as the original email I received today, so clearly that is an IP address used by the U.S. military in Iraq.

    Ladies and Gentlemen of the alleged jury, it appears that some education is in order. Whenever you see an IP address that starts with “10.”, “172.16.” through “172.31.”, “169.254”, or “192.168”, it is the rough equivalent of “555” telephone number. These ranges of addresses are set aside for local networks. They cannot be assigned to servers on the network, and properly-configured Internet routers will refuse to send traffic to them.

    An email that comes from a 10. address is prima facie fake.

    The Monster (49ff92)

  64. Um, ya know… Gleen has previously had an email from this guy. Who is to say whether Gleen is pretending the header from the old email is the header on the new one. Files are easy to fiddle with.

    Steve (2aa8d6)

  65. “An email that comes from a 10. address is prima facie fake.”

    Er, no. If you look at the headers, it was passed from a 10. address to a legit IP on the same network. All it means is that the military is operating an Intranet behind a DMZ server using private IPs. (with the DMZ doing the NATing before traffic goes on to the internet).

    This is actually pretty common – the base network at Wright-Patterson AFB where I used to work did the same sort of thing.

    Not necessarily fake, but easy _to_ fake.

    Dave (53e5ec)

  66. The easy way to address this is to send the colonel an e-mail and see what header information comes back when he responds. If it is the same then the colonel will have a little more trouble explaining how the email came from his computer without him sending it.

    The fact that there is a 10.x.x.x ip address in the message header doesn’t automatically classify it as fake if the firewall does NAT translation. I would think that the military would mask that information but it is possible that they didnt.

    chad (719bfa)

  67. I would think that the military would mask that information but it is possible that they didnt.

    Why bother, if I can get to that IP you’re security has already broken down totally anyway.

    Davebo (fbdf02)

  68. prima facie

    Prima facie is a Latin expression meaning “on its first appearance”, or “by first instance”. It is used in modern legal English to signify that on first examination, a matter appears to be self-evident from the facts. In common law jurisdictions, prima facie denotes evidence that (unless rebutted) would be sufficient to prove a particular proposition or fact.

    The Monster (49ff92)

  69. But you’re all not very interested in the important issues, are you?

    blah (e62210)

  70. But you’re all not very interested in the important issues, are you?

    blah, ever hear of a blog?

    They’re great; getting your own means you can discuss anything you want.

    Paul (66339f)

  71. The important issues in this case are those raised by that odd, pathetic, email from Patraeus’ flack. As another lawyer put it:

    There’s a lot of evidence that the Army is politicized: after all, the senior officers are in the tank for GWB or they are forced out. The junior officers are leaving in droves as a result. The enlisted appear divided, with a very substantial group at least unhappy about the war with no end in sight.

    This isn’t good, but I wonder how different it really is from Vietnam. You know, that conflict from which the Colin Powell’s Army said it learned so many lessons. Before it forgot them.

    I think this is the important issue. But accusations of sock-puppetry are more important to you.

    blah (e62210)

  72. The only important issue here is that people like Glenn Greenwald and you are defeatists, your first and last resort is character assassination, the military brass has realized it, and they are treating you accordingly.

    Boohoo.

    chaos (9c54c6)

  73. I think this is the important issue.

    So somebody else’s moonbat fantasies are important to you. (And make no mistake, Michael Froomkin is a hard-left liberal law professor.)

    I see.

    Paul (66339f)

  74. The email was unprofessionally sarcastic. However, I can understand and agree with many of the sentiments and even points in it. And can understand that a PR officer who spends a fair amount of time bantering with the press while he’s setting up real interviews may not appreciate how GG will snap at the opportunity to make a snarky email the story itself.

    I didn’t see the part of the story, where the colonel denied sending the email. But if he did send it. Then denied it. That is lying. And very wrong.

    TCO (79dafb)

  75. 13: It’s impossible to read about the Seixon issue (which I did not hear at the time) since his blog is gone and all the stories link to details on there.)

    TCO (79dafb)


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