Although I agree someone should teach Valve a thing or two about how to treat your fans and customers, nobody deserves this for a game they've worked on for that long.
The problem is that he hasn't missed anything. Meaning that it's a problem there hasn't been anything to miss. Meaning he wishes there would have been something to miss. He doesn't really care if the guy misses it or not, but if he misses something, then at least there is something to miss. If...
Wow, you guys just don't get it. Munro didn't really do anything wrong, he found a bug in the system and showed it to Chris. Chris accidently told him some stuff he shouldn't have, but that's besides the point, because Munro promised to not publish it.
Then Chris sends an e-mail to Gabe or...
Very much so. I can't describe how much respect I lost for Valve after pulling this stupid stunt of announcing a delay of at least several months just a week before the release. It honestly sounds like he cares in that interview, which for a while I think he didn't.
Why are they so afraid to...
I don't remember, sorry, I could go through all the sites again and dig out the link for you, but wouldn't that be pointless? The point is that they were allowed to bring their own cards for testing and one or more sites did so. You said they were allowed to use only Valve's hardware for testing...
Each site had 90 minutes to perform tests. They could bring their own graphics cards and decide what settings they wanted to use for each test, but that was it. They never got to touch the keyboard.