Also, the email adress might be owned by an innocent person. I remember getting spam a year or two back...that was sent by MY OWN email somehow.

(Ya know, the rich uncle from nigeria who has to flee the country and wants to dump a few million bucks on your account. That one.) It seems to have stopped fortunately, but I was quite amazed at finding out that other people's email adresses could be used to send out spam without them knowing.
I suppose the colonel's idea might have worked if it wasn't for this slight ethical problem. It's a bit of a shame that we can't rewrite the laws of physics at will and make plan b work.
Although, given humanity's track record, having that ability would mean we would have written ourselves out of existence before lunchtime.
