Word: alertness
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...response from Managua to last week's rebel probes was to divert attention from the clashes around Esteli with the familiar warnings of an impending U.S. invasion. The Nicaraguan Defense Ministry placed the armed forces on maximum alert. But sources close to the government said that while officials were "worried" about the escalation of rebel activity in the northern part of the country, the contras don't yet "pose a real threat to toppling the government, even if they are very efficient at creating chaos...
...held this week. But Pakistan's President Mohammed Zia ul-Haq was taking no chances that the outpouring of sympathy for the Bhutto family would turn into a huge and possibly unmanageable political demonstration. Zia conveyed his condolences to young Bhutto's mother, then placed military forces on alert in Sind province, the traditional political turf of Bhutto and his Pakistan People's Party. Soldiers searched all incoming cars, buses, trucks and trains. The government also placed P.P.P. leaders under house arrest and forbade many prominent figures to attend the pending rites...
...threatened to intervene unilaterally in the Mideast. We could not allow Israel to go down the tube. We could not allow the Soviets to have a predominant position in the region. That had to be the bottom line. I wanted to send that message, and putting the weapons on alert did that. We did not so much want to threaten the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons as to indicate that the U.S. would resist them, conventional and nuclear. That was my decision. There's been a lot of second-guessing that it was someone else's. It was mine...
...least for a short while, with scenes of missiles shooting out of silos in Kansas cornfields and of dazed Midwesterners bravely trying to go on in the aftermath of a nuclear assault. (Kawamoto's criticism of The Day After was that the survivors would never have been that alert.) Other new films and television movies like Threads have graphically shown devastated cities and families, bodies crushed by buildings, the disintegration of flesh. None of these works deals realistically (if at all) with the political processes by which a nuclear war might be started, only with the dire consequences. That...
...California to chop wood. Hoarseness from the tube in his throat? He certainly sounded hoarse when he appeared on TV with the President of China, but now, at ease in his office, it would take an ear with perfect pitch to detect a problem. If anything, he seems more alert than he normally is. His eyes are concerned and clear. His answers are less rambling and nostalgic than usual. He obviously wants to dispel any suspicion of weakness or disability...