Now that you mention it...

Col. Pat Lang...

McChrystal was summoned from England to a 25 minute meeting with the president aboard Air Force 1. He showed up in field uniform? He owns a set of Greens (Class A uniform). He wore it in London to the IISS meeting. The man does not seem to know his place.

I'd been a little disturbed by the photos of McChrystal on the President's plane myself, but attributed it to my general dislike of the contemporary cammo uniforms. I prided myself on being a strack soldier back in the day. I had my fatigues pegged the week I got out of basic training and had my own tw's tailored because I couldn't get my G.I. khakis altered to my satisfaction. Jungle fatigues were more problematic - the cargo pockets made it hard to get them pegged like regular olive drabs, but there was a ready solution - more starch.

Today's fatigue uniform is a puffy, baggy mess. If you starched and pressed them as crisp as the uniforms we wore way back when, they'd be covered with molten blobs of velcro. The institutionalization of sloppiness is just one of the things I hate about what they've done to my Army.

But Col. Lang makes a good point that may have affected my irritation with the photos as well. Imagine the reaction if President Obama had conducted the meeting in jeans and a tee-shirt. It seems disrespectful, if not insubordinate, to select a fatigue uniform for a meeting with the Commander In Chief.

It seems particularly so given the typically wrinkled, always baggy uniforms of today.

/end curmudgeon