General Bloat

There's a hoary story about the lion who escaped from the Washington Zoo and survived on his own for six months--he went to the Pentagon and ate a general a day and nobody ever missed them.

I really do not begrudge Ann E. Dunwoody her fourth star, but I am shadowed by two considerations:

• From now on, every general who actually hears a shot fired in anger will want a fifth star to prove that he (sic?) is a real player.

• I think I saw on the CNN crawl that there are now 21 female generals in the Army. How long has it been since there were 21 generals total in the Army?