Has this email conversation been posted to the blue yet?

May 22, 2006 9:45 PM

Has the Galloway-Di Rita email conversation been posted to the blue yet? I've done several searches and have not found it. This is newsfilter or so close to newsfilter that I don't want to screw up my hypocrisy with a double-post.
posted by Ethereal Bligh to MetaFilter-related at 9:45 PM (28 comments total)

classy
posted by cellphone at 9:59 PM on May 22, 2006

At the appointed hour he sent hundreds of missiles screaming into the fleet, and dozens of kamikaze boats and planes plunging into the Navy ships in a simultaneous sneak attack that overwhelmed the Navy's much-vaunted defenses based on its Aegis cruisers and their radar controlled Gatling guns.

That's so bunk (I was at MC 02). If you end up posting this, I'll try and divulge why.
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 10:12 PM on May 22, 2006

how does a free-play wargame actually work, FC? i'm picturing this sort of really bigassedly expensive AD&D game from the text in that link, but maybe you could better explain it. is it possibly the most awesome version of AOE ever created?

i think that would be a cool post.
posted by fishfucker at 10:24 PM on May 22, 2006

I don't want to screw up

Never a good reason to post to the Grey. This is not a preflight area.

Do your searches and take the same damn risk every newb does, Keith.
posted by scarabic at 11:16 PM on May 22, 2006

Related metafilter posts..

A post on Paul Van Riper and The Millennium Challenge War Game.

August 21, 2002 - A wargame carried out by the US military was rigged

The Millennium challenge war game is also discussed in these posts.

August 20, 2002 - Iraq's Aziz Says U.S. Attack Would Fai
March 30, 2003 - Much of the supply of Tomahawk cruise missiles has been expended, ...
June 28, 2004 - Sovreign Iraq, two days early
January 13, 2005 - The man who thinks about thinking without thinking.

Some posts that discuss war gaming against Iran.

February 10, 2006 - Sorting out the Iran mess
April 8, 2006 - The Iran Plans

What looks like y2karl's magnum-opus on the history of Iran as it relates to western politics (and it mentions war games too).

March 7, 2005 - Clouds Over Iran: The Past Roots of Unintended Consequences Present

Another fabulous looking post that includes discussion of war gaming, this time thanks to mediareport.

March 27, 2003 - Lessons from Urban Operations Journal

To complete the war game related posts

November 29, 2005 - American air superiority? ... Gaming Indian Wars.

And finally, just because it is so ridiculous

April 10, 2003 - Sony is attempting to trademark the term "Shock and Awe"

posted by Chuckles at 11:29 PM on May 22, 2006

All this should be in the blue.
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:39 PM on May 22, 2006

administrator!!! please hope me!
posted by anotherpanacea at 11:41 PM on May 22, 2006

One of my favorite Who Stories...

Doctor: [To the Time Lords] 'All these evils I have fought, while you have done nothing but observe! True, I am guilty of interference. Just as you are guilty of failing to use your great powers to help those in need!'
posted by Dreamghost at 12:12 AM on May 23, 2006

Can someone sumaraize what that stuff is about? I've seen it posted around in other places around the blogscapeosphere with everyone saying "oh, this is great" but why? What are these two talking about?

Summarize it for me.
posted by Paris Hilton at 12:18 AM on May 23, 2006

You talk about "rumsfeld's fondest ideas and theories" as if you have
the first clue as to what those are. I have worked with him
side-by-side for five years, and I wouldn't even try to divine what his
fondest ideas and theories are.

That's supposed to be a defense?

(i'm reading it because you people have been to lazy to summaraize it for me)
posted by Paris Hilton at 12:31 AM on May 23, 2006

you can sit there all day telling me that pigs can fly, with or without lipstick, and i am not going to believe it. seemingly the reverse is also true. one of us is dead wrong and i have a good hunch that it would be you. you go flying blind through that forest and you are going to find those trees for sure. whether or not paul van riper has ever met Secretary Rumsfeld is not at issue.

--- Galloway

This guy mixes metaphores like they're going out of style! Never meta a cliche he didn't want to take home to momma
posted by Paris Hilton at 12:45 AM on May 23, 2006

"Never a good reason to post to the Grey. This is not a preflight area.

Do your searches and take the same damn risk every newb does, Keith."

Ah, scarabic's tough love. In my defense, I didn't intend this post to be sort of a trial post—I only included the links out of habit. I did look for it a variety of ways, and was pretty sure it hadn't been posted, but still was sceptical because it's so much the type of thing that would have been posted. Of course I, like others here, usually see this sort of thing before it shows up on mefi. Which is why I dislike newsfilter. See, that's me being a hypocrite.

In all seriousness, this is something found only on the Internet as far as I know; is of the Internet being email; and has minor historic significance, I think. So I'd like to post it, but I don't want to double-post. Failing my own searches, it seemed to make sense to ask here where I'd get the answer right quick.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 1:51 AM on May 23, 2006

Post it already, but contextualize what it is ....
posted by Rumple at 2:56 AM on May 23, 2006

If it's a double, it will be deleted. If it is deleted, you are out the FIVE WHOLE MINUTES it took you to make the post. If it is not deleted it will LIVE FOREVER.
posted by klangklangston at 6:57 AM on May 23, 2006

I wasn't a member and couldn't comment when I first started reading MetaFilter but I can comment now (obviously).
I followed your flaming, collision filled trajectory entry to MetaFilter with interest. As far as I can remember it was your verbosity that was the problem with some members. I, along with some others, skipped over some of your stuff but certainly not all. Now you are worried about hypocrisy and double posting?
You have turned into a wuss if you are worried about being labelled as a hypocrite or a double poster.
Post, it if it means something to you ([even though I read it] you won't get a comment from me, because it means nothing to me).
posted by tellurian at 7:06 AM on May 23, 2006

It probably wouldn't be that good of a post, anyway.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:31 AM on May 23, 2006

I'm having a hard time understanding why this slap fight would make a good post. There's nothing new here. When we had several generals who had commanded in Iraq publicly bashing Rummy, that was news for a couple days. And we already beat it to death.

But this seems pretty weak in comparison.

"publish it on line immediately" ??? Why? The administration obviously doesn't care about opinions like this, and it would probably prompt Bush to just give him an award. The American people obviously don't care enough to muster more than a timid scowl. And everyone at this site has already been swamped with this sort of stuff, and much worse.

Look, I'm extremely depressed that something like this can fall into the "nothing to see here" category. But at this point it does, doesn't it?
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:33 AM on May 23, 2006

Sorry I was so rude, EB. I meant to say: just post it!
posted by scarabic at 7:48 AM on May 23, 2006

Just post it already...
posted by Fidel Cashflow at 7:51 AM on May 23, 2006

It probably wouldn't be that good of a post, anyway.
posted by Ethereal Bligh
Okay. Don't post it, it's covered now here anyway.
posted by tellurian at 8:09 AM on May 23, 2006

"Look, I'm extremely depressed that something like this can fall into the 'nothing to see here' category. But at this point it does, doesn't it?"

Well, like pretty much everything newsfiltery I've considered posting, at the time it seemed like something of greater significance than just the days' (or weeks' or months') news and posessing some inherently internal extraordinary quality. I've not gone back and read the exchange again; but I can't predict whether a second read-through would reveal a banality I missed or that I'd come to the same conclusion. The qualities that seemed to me to be notable were that these were self-evidently the heartfelt comments of a lifetime in-the-trenches war reporter at the moment of his retirement when he has no more incentive to pull any punches and contrasted against the smarmy bland defenses of a political staff hack. His invocation of the spectre of holding a dying comrade in one's arms in the purpose of a rebuke at the chickenhawk civilian leadership of the Pentagon was both hackneyed yet truthful. I've always believed that the portion of this clusterfuck that is Rumsfeld's responsibility is the portion that is about nothing more than Rumsfeld's arrogance and vanity and his precious desire to be the Father of the Future of American Military Doctrine. Say what you will about the professional warriors at the Pentagon and elsewhere—to many or most of them war really and truly is about the bloody reality of killing and being killed.

Well, anyway, all that is just to encapsulate what I thought was exceptional and post-worthy in this little corner of the Internet. But is that any different from any other defense of a newsfilter post? Probably not much. Indeed, just putting aside the post's inherent quality, there's no good justification in my opinion for a post that is motivated chiefly by my sense of it being an important and heartfelt articulation of something that everyone needs to read, right now. Most such posts are tedious; there's few good arguments why this would be the exception.

And, anyway, all I really wanted was to know if it had already been posted before I seriously considered posting it myself. Like so many things on MetaFilter, discretion in the form of throwing into the bit-bucket those two paragraphs of just-composed text is almost always the better part of valor. If someone else wants to post it, more power to them.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 8:35 AM on May 23, 2006

I've not gone back and read the exchange again...

Well, there's a clue. If it ain't worth reading twice, then it probably ain't the best of the web.
posted by cribcage at 9:01 AM on May 23, 2006

"Well, there's a clue. If it ain't worth reading twice, then it probably ain't the best of the web."

That's quite true. However, in this case I'm pretty sure I haven't read it again because I've still not gone to bed yet "today" and my priorities right now are to indulge in things I really want to do, not what I really ought to do. That's why I'm going to mosey on over to TWoP and see what they're saying about the two most recent Sopranos episodes, which I only just watched in the last few hours.

So my current apathy is probably not that accurately representative of the this email exchange's value.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:13 AM on May 23, 2006

Metafilter: It probably wouldn't be that good of a post, anyway.
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:14 AM on May 23, 2006

"motivated chiefly by my sense of it being an important and heartfelt articulation of something that everyone needs to read, right now"

/hug

One of the things that has honestly made weep over the last few years is the fact that such "holy shit" items can be lost in the constant waves of exceptionally alarming news arising from the way Bush & Co are running the country. Couple that with the fact that Americans are more concerned with American Idol than with the crumbling of their democracy, and you have some seriously messed up context for political FFPs. We're facing a national sea change in terms of what many considered core parts of the Bill of Rights. Our president is a confirmed liar who has stated an interest in consolidating power in the administrative branch, while also asserting that he is above the law. Warrantless searches. Holding citizens without charge. Fiscal irresponsibility so bad we can't stare directly at it.

But we've been-there done-that so many times that I don't see the value in doing it again.

My point was not that it isn't exceptional, but rather that we need to stop beating the dead horse and find a new way.
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:10 AM on May 23, 2006

Mannlicher-Carcano M-91/38 6.5x52mm with a Japanese made non-adjustable x4 telescopic sight?

Shit; that's been done before too.
posted by longbaugh at 11:19 AM on May 23, 2006

I watch foxnews at the gym all the time, sadly, and you'd be amazed how often they promote american idol. Why? because it's owned by fox...
posted by Paris Hilton at 11:23 AM on May 23, 2006

Post it, people will be amused.

It's great how Di Rita's only defence at the end is "you are hurting Rumsfield's feelings!"
posted by afu at 12:40 PM on May 23, 2006