"[O]ngoing processes of substantial increases in personnel”

I've always liked Dick Cavett. I used to watch his television show with my mother, who, I suspect, had a bit of a crush on the guy. This gives me the giggles, because Cavett was in marked contrast to my dad, who was sort of like Tony Soprano had he been (a) in a legitimate line of work and (b) not, you know, a sociopath, but I digress ... I also liked Cavett when he used to show up on the Stern show (yeah, just for its whole "Odd Couple" schtick) back in (I think) the early '90s. Anyway, notaboomer over at Eschaton clued me into Cavet's musings on Petraeus and Crocker's recent congressional sideshow and, well, just read it. Here's a highlight:

What would the general be forced to say if it weren’t for the icky, precious-sounding “challenge” that he leans so heavily on? That politically correct term, which was created so that folks who are legally blind, deaf, clumsy, crippled, impotent, tremor-ridden, stupid, addicted or villainously ugly are really none of those unhappy things at all. They are merely challenged. (Are these euphemisms supposed to make them feel better?) And no one need be unlucky enough to be dead or hideously wounded anymore. Those unfortunates are merely “casualties” — a sort of restful-sounding word.

(I have a friend who would like the opportunity to say to our distinguished warrior, “General Petraeus, my son was killed in one of your challenges.”)

Petraeus uses “challenge” for a rich variety of things. It covers ominous developments, threats, defeats on the battlefield and unfound solutions to ghastly happenings. And of course there’s that biggest of challenges, that slapstick band of silent-movie comics called, flatteringly, the Iraqi “fighting forces.” (A perilous one letter away from “fighting farces.”) The ones who are supposed to allow us to bring troops home but never do.

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.

Hang in there to the end. You don't want to miss the part about George Amstrong Custer and the "Genghis Khan of Crawford, Texas."

I think my mother may have been a closet liberal.