Excerpts of General Petraeus' Report Leaked!!!

[alcibiades_mystery]

From p. 8:

"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream. It's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor. And surviving."

From p. 23:

"We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig, cow after cow, village after village, army after army. And they call me an assassin. What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie. Those napalms. I hate them. How I hate them..."

From p. 73:

"The Democratic Congress is behaving like errand boys, sent by grocery clerks. To collect the bill."

From p. 194:

"I've seen horrors. Horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that. But you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face, and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with the 3rd Army. Seems a thousand centuries ago. We went into a camp to inoculate the children. We left the camp after we had inoculated the children for Polio, and this old man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went back there and they had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile. A pile of little arms. And I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God. The genius of that. The genius. The will. To do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not monsters. These were men, trained cadres. These men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love, but they had the strength - the STRENGTH - to do that. If I had ten divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral... and at the same time who are able to utilize their primordial instincts to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment. Without judgment. Because it's judgment that defeats us."

Journalists receiving the leaked report also express puzzlement that about a third of the document seems to be taken up by random citations of T.S. Eliot's poetry, particularly "The Hollow Men."

[daninthemoon]

1. The Horror. The Horror.

[annabanana]

2. very funny. . .n/t

[billyoc]

3. Petreus got off the boat.

He split from the whole fuckin' program.

[theoldman]

4. I hope this crap is not in his report.

It has nothing to do with the war in Iraq.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Does it start by saying

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderlay again ?

[Cirque du So-What]

6. He's out there

operating without any decent restraint.
Totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.
And he is still in the field commanding his troops.