Word: aback
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Moscow may have been taken aback by the worldwide condemnation of its invasion of Afghanistan, but all its trumpets of propaganda blared denial and defiance. The Afghanistan rebellion had to be suppressed, went the Kremlin line, and so the Soviet army had to suppress it. "To have acted otherwise," said Soviet Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev, "would have meant leaving Afghanistan a prey to imperialism." Furthermore, said Brezhnev, Afghanistan was not even the cause of the current crisis. Said he: "If there were no Afghanistan, certain circles in the U.S. and in NATO would have found another pretext to aggravate...
...being paid to do this, I know you are! Get the hell out of Seabrook!" Inside information? "The Communists paid them, the radical Communists." She is told that many Communist nations, including the Soviet Union, like nuclear power, use more than the U.S. For a moment, she is taken aback. Then comprehension dawns. "Yes, they have it--they don't want...
Chou said that he would submit a proposed draft. It was unprecedented in design. It stated the Chinese position on a whole host of issues in extremely uncompromising terms. It left blank pages for our position. It was intransigent on Taiwan. At first I was taken aback. To end a presidential visit with a catalogue of disagreements was extraordinary. But as I reflected further I began to see that the very novelty of the approach might resolve our perplexities. A statement of differences would reassure allies and friends that their interests had been defended. If we could develop some common...
They did not constitute a representative sample of national leadership. Many of the guests, even from private life, had close ties to Carter or to previous Democratic Administrations. Barbara Newell, president of Wellesley College, professed herself surprised to be invited. She should not have been taken aback; she is slated to be named by Carter as Under Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare...
Israelis were taken aback by the criticism. Traditionally, American Jews tend to refrain from public criticism of elected officials responsible for the fate of the Jewish state. The letter did not question Israel's basic right to establish such settlements, but as one government official put it, "when you have clever people who argue that the settlements are legal but illadvised, the impression is still left that something is wrong with building settlements...