Cavett-Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.

[underpants]

http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/11/memo-to-petraeus-crocker-more-laughs-please/?em&ex=1208404800&en=4fae4715616aa912&ei=5087%0A

Once again it is time to bid aloha to that sober team of mirthless entertainers, Petraeus & Crocker.

I can’t look at Petraeus — his uniform ornamented like a Christmas tree with honors, medals and ribbons — without thinking of the great Mort Sahl at the peak of his brilliance. He talked about meeting General Westmoreland in the Vietnam days. Mort, in a virtuoso display of his uncanny detailed knowledge — and memory — of such things, recited the lengthy list (”Distinguished Service Medal, Croix de Guerre with Chevron, Bronze Star, Pacific Campaign” and on and on), naming each of the half-acre of decorations, medals, ornaments, campaign ribbons and other fripperies festooning the general’s sternum in gaudy display. Finishing the detailed list, Mort observed, “Very impressive!” Adding, “If you’re twelve.”

(As speakers, both Petraeus and Crocker are guilty of unbearable sesquipedalianism, a word wickedly inflicted on me by my English-teaching mother. It’s one of those words that is what it says. From the Latin, literally “using foot-and-a-half-long words.” We all learned the word for words that sound like what they say — like “click” or “pop” or “boom” or “hiss” — but I’m sure the mercifully defunct Famous Writers School surely forbade using the “sesqui” word and “onomatopoeia” in the same paragraph. (You can have fun with both of them at your next cocktail party.)

Petraeus’s verbal road is full of all kinds of bumps and lurches and awkward oddities. How about “ongoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”?
Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers.

It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me.

Could it be he is being overtaken by the thought that an honorable career has been besmirched by his obediently doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas? The one whose foolish military misadventure seems to increasingly resemble that of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn?

Not an apt comparison, I admit.

Custer sent only 258 soldiers to their deaths.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. I spent time studying in the USSR in my yute

college, actually.

Their generals made routine and regular appearances, and the military would drive through the center of every large city at noon, just for show. Petraeus' uniform reminds me precisely of that time in 1976. Also, the growing visibility, control, and government interference in day to day activities of this country's citizens is more like the Soviet Union of that era, than of America from that same timeframe. We have become our enemy, now that they vanquished themselves. Our generals have become PR walking bilboards of ribbon and precious metals, intended to shock and awe - - - Americans.

[underpants]

2. The cult of personality of Patreus and the endless citing him as a reference reminds me of Israel

where no matter the issue military or otherwise the President's opinion is noted, the Prime minister's, the majority leader, the minority leader and even the top generals

I doubt that this is any accident in the current environment.

[FSogol]

3. [Petraeus] doing the dirty work of the tinpot Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas?

The one whose foolish military misadventure seems to increasingly resemble that of Gen. George Armstrong Custer at Little Bighorn?

Not an apt comparison, I admit.

Custer sent only 258 soldiers to their deaths.

I love it. :rofl: