Word: airlifters
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...principal theater in the struggle between freedom and authoritarianism. Truman made the first presidential visit to postwar Berlin, driving through the ruins of the city in the wake of the Allied bombardment. The Allies' refusal to abandon the city to the Soviets, demonstrated most dramatically during the Berlin airlift of 1948, endeared a generation of Berliners to the U.S. When Kennedy arrived in Berlin in 1962, the city was gripped by something approaching mass hysteria; Kennedy later confided that had he called on the throng - an estimated 750,000 witnessed his "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech at Schoenberg City Hall...
...weapons and their components. (Gates also nominated top Pentagon bureaucrat Michael Donley to succeed Wynne). Both appointments require Senate approval, and Schwartz's nomination apparently came just in time. His biography on the Transportation Command website- which lists his first big military mission "as a crewmember in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon," a sign of humility rarely witnessed among fighter pilots-had the words "Retiring effective Jan. 1, 2009" at noon Monday, but that line was gone...
...Rebel forces, however, accused the French airlift of expatriates of providing cover for Chadian army attack helicopters operating out of the same base. By firing rockets at rebel formations, those helicopters allowed Déby loyalists to drive insurgent troops to the outskirts of N'Djamena on Monday. Regrouping outside the capital, rebel leaders began blaming the hundreds of dead and wounded civilians discovered in their wake by aid groups on alleged bombing raids by French warplanes on insurgent positions. France flatly denied those charges, and insisted that French troops had confined themselves to protecting foreign nationals...
...Thousands of Chadian civilians flocked from N'Djamena Monday ahead of a feared resurgence in fighting in the coming hours or days. Rebel leaders pledged to finish off the government forces in N'Djamena once they'd regrouped, and threatened to attack an airbase French troops are using to airlift foreigners caught up in the fighting. The insurgents claim the airlifts served as cover for the rocket-firing Chadian army helicopters, which operate out of the same airstrip and that pounded rebel positions...
...Thousands of N'Djamena residents took that swaggering as a sure sign it was time to flee, and French troops picked up the pace of their airlift. By noon Monday, the French Army said it had transported more than 800 foreign nationals to Gabon, around 570 of whom have been flown on to France. Another 200 are waiting to be evacuated from Chad. Around 1,500 French soldiers are stationed in Chad under bilateral security accord...