Catch Phrases VI

Blah, blah, blah!

This could very well be the stupidest person on the face of the earth. Perhaps we should shoot him.^*

^*What, you've never seen Ruthless People? Great movie.




condi quote with link:

Trust me, she is no expert on the Soviet Union
I actually saw this ditz in action. She came to Berlin and was giving all the strategic intel troops in Europe a speech about the Eeeeevil Empire :shudder: and how they were so numerically and militarily superior to our troops, how they had Super Weapons That Could Shoot Through Fifty Feet of Concrete...and all this time, I'm looking over at my guys like "we're talking about the same Soviets, right? The ones we have can't shoot, can't march, are underfed, can't run..." We're passing notes between the Berlin contingent, the Augsburg contingent, the Bad Aibling contingent, the human-intelligence guys, the Spetsnaz analysts...and we all came to the same conclusion: the Soviet Army Condi Rice was working was a hell of a lot better than the one we were.

Finally my colonel looked at me and said, "Jim, I've had about enough of this shit." He actually stood up and said, "Ms. Rice, one question. What are the true-unit designators and honorifics of the units you are describing?" Condi Rice's response was classic: "What is an honorific?" If you do not know what an honorific is you are no expert on the Soviet Army, and Condi Rice didn't know. (We didn't tell her either; we all left at that point.)

All Soviet units had a true-unit designator and an honorific. The TUD was easy enough to understand: your unit is the 1st Guards Army or the 20th Motorized Rifle Division. (The title Guards was awarded at the end of WWII to units who fought with great valor.) Each Soviet unit was organized in honor of a famous communist--maybe you were the 144th "Feliks Dzherzinsky" Guards Artillery Battalion. Feliks Dzherzinsky was your unit's honorific. They'd hang Feliks' picture in your unit dayroom and everything you did was to impress ol' Feliks.

IOW, the colonel was telling Condi to put up or shut up; we knew their guys weren't half as good as Condi was telling us.

Condoleezza Rice was an expert on Ronald Reagan's Soviet Army, the unstoppable bogeyman raised to justify the runaway military spending of the Reagan era. But Reagan's Sovs and my Sovs were two completely different armies. Condi's Sovs were absolute masters of the art of land warfare; my Sovs trained for five months, rotated a quarter of the company, and did the exact same five-month training schedule again. (Later, after reunification I went to a Soviet Army base on an open-house tour and saw a genuine Soviet Army company training schedule. It was painted on a sheet of plywood and bolted to the wall.)

Levels of Tzedaka

You have problem with Corporate Capitalist ^™®©, comrade?<sup>*

*</sup>H/t CZ at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for this quote.

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Another day, another shooting