My thought is that the UK MoD assumed that the US would have a plan and were floored when it wasn’t forthcoming, or were lulled by the early reports that the State Department had the post-invasion planning responsibility.

In the post 9/11 atmosphere almost no one would listen to warnings. The masses were whipped into a frenzy by the media. Car flags blown off vehicles replaced drink containers as the number one type of road side litter. It was jingoism at its worst.

If it gets shown in the US it is well worth a wach. I darseay what it says will be less of a surprise than it is to us here.

He views his job as crafting a message for the effort, not providing information. I wouldn’t even claim that Petraeus knows what Boylan is doing.

Since this is being done by e-mail, there is no guarantee that Boylan himself knows what is in the e-mails. He may have an assistant or two actually writing them, a practice that is not uncommon in the military. These e-mails may be coming from a response shop set up to read and counter anything said on the blogs about Iraq.

That’s more than the doings of a hack spewing agitprop… it seems to me to be the actions of an agent of the Republican Party’s political establishment. I do hope you have read (or will read) Greenwald’s frequently updated post. As an ordinary member of the public, I’d find it exTREMEly disturbing if in fact a prominent member of the serving military is using his position to engage in partisan domestic politics.

He’s pure agitprop, part of a team to suppress complaints. They can’t win on the ground, so they’ll try to win in the media.