Word: battlefield
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...ranks. Name-calling is common and fights are frequent. Another problem is the reluctance of Soviet officers to take initiative. They have been trained to prize iron discipline, they believe in conformity to a highly centralized command system, and?above all?they follow orders. But on a modern battlefield, communications can easily be cut and unit formations disrupted. Under these conditions, Soviet officers might not be able to take advantage of sudden opportunities and improvise winning tactics...
...experts believe that the initial invasion was an impressive military operation. The Soviet forces, which were commanded by Marshal Sergei Sokolov, 68, demonstrated that they had mastered the techniques of airlifting enormous quantities of men and supplies, coordinating air and ground attacks, and controlling the action on a distant battlefield via complicated satellite communications systems. And, as the U.S. did in Viet Nam, the Soviet command is battle-testing its weapons and officers...
...periods of East-West tension, passages from its pages are quoted in the Western press like captured battlefield communiqués. Specialists in Bonn, London, Paris and Washington sift through its stilted, often impenetrable prose searching for subtle shifts in foreign policy. Photographs of the ruling elite are scrutinized for changes in status, and cartoons are scoured for arcane political references. "Pravda," says its editor, Victor Afanasyev, "is read on the lines and between the lines...
...with the combat fatalities that inevitably are going to occur disproportionately in some groups. We are going to have a massive social problem be cause while the armed forces are viewed as a good job opportunity in peacetime, in wartime that becomes an opportunity for death on the battlefield. You are going to have an understandable cry from minorities as well as those who don't believe that people lower on the economic ladder should bear a disproportionate amount of wartime deaths and casualties. I share this concern...
Domestic landmarks dot this battlefield: a cop pulls a protester from the treehouse he had climbed into; a trooper stands guard duty in front of an above-the-ground swimming pool; two men sit in lawn chairs sipping Michelob until the tear gas gets too thick and they retreat to their glassed-in-porch. After the first rush, there seems little hope of gaining the site, but scattered charges at the fence continue. As fast as the grappling hooks are attached, troopers with bolt cutters cut them off the fence, often sending those on the other end reeling backwards, losers...