Word: airstrips
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Rodd, a cement-plant worker, proclaimed: "This is the week of our liberation." Newly painted writing appeared beside the faded slogans of the revolution on the walls of buildings. GOD BLESS AMERICA read some. A few residents suggested as delicious irony: the island's new 10,000-ft. airstrip, begun with Cuban labor and long the object of deep concern in Washington, be completed with U.S. dollars and be named "Ronald Reagan International Airport...
When Soviet Ambassador Gennadi I. Sazhenev rode one of the Mercedes to the new airstrip, where 126 occupants of the Soviet embassy were to board a U.S. military C-130 transport, a bizarre diplomatic clash occurred. U.S. soldiers insisted on searching the car. "We're looking for bombs," an American officer disingenuously explained. The ambassador grumpily assented. But for nearly eight hours he angrily resisted efforts by U.S. soldiers to search all of the Soviet baggage, including a number of unsealed crates. When he finally and reluctantly yielded, the reason for his obduracy became clear: one crate contained...
After sitting for six days under the eyes of U.S. Army guards, the Cuban construction workers were permitted to move to a more habitable tent city they had erected near the airstrip. All of the captured Cubans were sent there as the tedious process of interviewing each man continued. The U.S. interrogators wanted to determine just how many were professional soldiers, trained reservists, ordinary workers or various combinations of all three. Many of the prisoners looked too old, paunchy or otherwise unfit to be soldiers...
...Point Salines airstrip, the Rangers managed to clear the runway of pipes, boulders and vehicles, which had been placed there by Grenadians and Cubans. The Rangers could now fly onto the field in C-130s. By 7:15 a.m. the airstrip was secure. Hundreds of Cubans had thrown down their weapons and surrendered to the superior U.S. firepower...
...supply of nutmeg. Declared the President: "It isn't nutmeg that's at stake in the Caribbean and Central America. It is the U.S. national security." In a TV speech 13 days later, he showed a classified photo of the Cuban barracks on Grenada and the growing airstrip. "Grenada doesn't even have an air force," Reagan said. "Who is this intended for?" He answered his own question: "The Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada can only be seen as power projection into the region...