An annotated guide to the medals of General Petraeus

In the post below, I referred to the fauxtrage (that's fake outrage) the conservatives are displaying over the fact that an insolent, snot-nosed kid was mercifully tasered at a campus event with John Kerry. However, there is even more fauxtrage in the air these days over the advertisement that Moveon.org took out in the NY Times recently, in which General David Petraeus was called "General Betray-us." OMG! Some hippies called a general a mean name, which they got by making a clever pun of his last name! This is simply unheard of!

Now, who is General David Petraeus, you may ask? Well, here's how he was described by Republican minority whip Roy Blunt:

a four-star general, a Princeton Ph.D., a recipient of the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, and the chief author of the Army’s definitive counterinsurgency manual

Man, that's impressive. I mean, the guy literally wrote the book on how to conduct an effective counterinsurgency. Apparently, however, the man who is able to look death in the eye, who is renowned for his mile-long jogs in the very heart of the insurgency, wilts like a delicate flower when a liberal advocacy group says something mean about him. I mean, heck, this guy can drive an unarmored Humvee through RPG Alley in Baghdad without so much as breaking a sweat, but when the NY Times runs an ad in which someone calls him "Betray-us," well, all bets are off.

With that in mind, I thought it would be helpful to present an image of David Petraeus with an annotated guide to a few of his recent medals. After all, when a guy appears before congress wearing what appears to be four square feet of assorted medals and honors, it's hard to keep track of what valorous deed is matched to which piece of hardware. Here, then, is a photo, along with an explanation for some of his most recent medals.