If only the sheep would hold the wolves to the same standard they hold the sheepdogs, (or give the sheepdogs the same latitude they give the wolves) Iraq would have been finished years ago. For the bozo who wrote “Fine. Then you should equally accept Mr. bin Laden and his al-Qaeda group’s 9/11 attacks upon the World Trade Center and Pentagon as legitimate conduct of war. His fatwa certainly constituted a declaration of war.” then is he saying it is O.K. for our troops to wipe out cities where al-qaeda is operating? He seems to have no trouble with al-qaeda attacking a strickly civilian target, therefore he must condone our doing it also because this is war according to him. Obviously another coward that has never stood up for America, he just wants the benefits that we (I am a purple heart vet), who risk our lives so scum like him can keep proclaiming their stupidity. I would love to hear him stand up in an arab country and disparage that country like he does the U.S. Cowards like him would never risk something like that.

Who knows? It is conceivable, I suppose. Unless you noticed the twinkle in their eyes when they said it. And that twenty years after the war they were frequent houseguests of one of the very richest men in Germany who liked us because…it’s a long story. I’ll tell it if anyone insists, which is unlikely. I can still see them in my memory, tall, trim, handsome, dressed always in gray “not quite uniforms,” as though they hoped any day to slip on armbands with swastikas and pull out their death’s head rings and Knight’s Crosses…I suppose that proves that even generals are human…

Ah. NOW I know why we’re talking about Generals! Because they are either disastrous or inspirational. My in-laws, in the Thirties, lived next door to Dwight David Eisenhower back when Dr. Major (to sound German) Traynham was “overhoused,” and DDE mowed the lawn of his quarters in shirtsleeves literally next door on the weekend. It’s like the joke about Bernstein’s father whacking him with a rolled up newspaper when he was young and slopped a cadenza. In later years Papa would quip, “How did I know he was Leonard Bernstein?!” It was difficult for them to think of Ike in terms of D-Day and being President, because they knew him when he was mortal.

Fifty years hence will anyone write high praise of Obama? Smile.

Sorry, Byron, I was just trying to amuse the readers and understand why we’re discussing Curtis, great guy or not. I’ll leave before I tell you about the time I was a houseguest at a party that included King Farouk’s sister. Most unpleasant female. These things just HAPPEN to me. Like being connected to Albert Einstein by marriage. (his nephew, my cousin) or my cousin, Andy, who is the first veterinerian to be wounded since the Spanish-American war. That one was kicked by a mule. Andy was asleep when a rocket came through and…

I like great generals, period.

Can we do Patton and Rommel next? Bobby Lee, of course…Lucullus, even…

If you want a villainous one several come to mind, as revealed in correspondence between the war department and the president…Ah, but WHEN?! As described by whom? Winners write history.

Aaron Burr was probably a delightful man (although not a general) when one got to know him. Anyone who loathed Alexander Hamilton probably had many splendid qualities.

I don’t know if he would have been a great battlefield commander, but my favorite modern general (who doted on me because I was the only person in the Officer’s Club with the nerve to call him at Liar’s Dice. Being a General is a real handicap when a fellow just wants to have fun and feel human, so he always saved me a seat to his left…) was a guy name of Price.

Had a sister who sang a little bit.

You may have heard of her? Leontyne?

I have always wished I had been able to meet their mother, a “single mom” (a widow, of course, back then) who reared her two exceptional children by staying home with them and cleaning office buildings at night while they slept. THAT is an example of all that is still occasionally great about America.

We need heroes. We need more shining examples of what is possible . We need to grow into BEING such examples.

This was viewed as justification for faith in the heavy bomber and for strategic bombing.

http://www.combinedops.com/pantellaria.htm

Albert Speer had nothing but praise for the bombing of Germany. Once the bombers concentrated on the synthetic fuel plants and the railroads, Germany was out of gas, literally. The railroads were needed to bring coal to the synthetic fuel plants.