Dissing the SecDef

The movie: Superman II, in either the Lester or the Donner cut. Both cuts are available on DVD, but as far as I can tell, only the Donner cut is available on Blu-Ray. On VHS, probably only the Lester cut is available. The following nit applies to both cuts.
What happened: There is an explosion in space which frees three Krypton criminals from the "phantom zone." The leader of the three, General Zod (Terence Stamp) realizes that as they get closer to Earth, their powers increase. The three of them go to East Houston, where they're confronted by the U. S. Army. All of the Army's weapons prove useless against them, and the news reporter realizes that the three newcomers are as strong as Superman. General Zod confronts the squadron's Commanding General (Don Fellows): "So you too are a general," Zod says, tearing off the four stars on the Army General's left shoulder. "Who is your leader?" Zod asks. The General says "I answer only to the President."
What the problem is: First of all, if the General only answers to the President, why is he standing at attention for Zod? Shouldn't a four-star general have more swagger than a small-town sheriff (such as the one Zod encounters earlier in the film)? Also, why did Lester choose the fruitiest possible line reading from Don Fellows? Donner's choice is not much better, as the angry line reading gives the subtext of "But I'm afraid of you."
Printed on the script, the line is the same. And it has another problem: the writers neglected to look at a real chain of command. There are two layers of civilian leadership between the President and a four-star general: the Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of Defense. When the General says he answers only to the President, he's in fact dissing the two Secretaries. A Sergeant may pray to God directly, but he had better talk to a few officers before talking to the General. Likewise, the General should talk to the Secretary of the Army before going to the President. Also, at the time the film was made, there was still the theoretical possibility of a five-star General, which would be yet another layer of leadership between a four-star general and the President.
You might be saying "Well, maybe in the world the movie takes place in, generals really do answer directly to the President." Let's say the Army in the movie has ten four-star generals. There would also be at least two four-stars in the Marine Corps and maybe another ten from the Air Force, plus ten four-star admirals in the Navy. That would mean at more than thirty four-star officers for the President to supervise directly, not to mention the Directors of the CIA, NSA, FBI, INS, etc. The President would be a much busier man. So it makes much more sense for all the four-star officers to report to one of three Secretaries (Marine four-star generals answer to the Secretary of the Navy), and those three Secretaries answer to the Secretary of Defense. The President, instead of getting reports from thirty different subordinates, just gets a report from the Secretary of Defense.
Also, how does Zod know that four stars on the shoulder means "General"? There are so many trinkets and baubles on an Army uniform that an alien can be forgiven if he doesn't know which one signifies rank. I suppose that if we accept that Kal-el's diamond-enclosed "S" is a pre-existing symbol from Krypton, we should let this one go.