“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap around women for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You knows guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway, so it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them”.

General James N. Mattis, newly-appointed Head of US Central Command and therefore General Petraeus’s Commanding Officer.

The quotation comes from a speech he made at a San Diego Forum in 2005 and reported in today’s Herald Trib.

Encouraging, ne c’est pas?