Word: beirutization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Even as General Paul Kelley, the Marine Commandant, was insisting in Beirut last week that security for his troops had been adequate, Marines were hard at work bolstering the compound's defenses. At the main checkpoint, bright yellow Lebanese buses were being positioned to block the only access road. In front of the compound entrance, crews were swinging rows of sandbags into place, while along the main highway, fresh coils of barbed wire were tied to metal stakes. The number of sentries at nighttime guard posts was heavily increased...
Officials explain that the Marines' role in Lebanon as a high-profile peace-keeping force, together with the Lebanese policy of keeping the Beirut airport open to commercial flights, made total security impossible. Said Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger at a press conference last week: "Nothing can work against a suicide attack like that, any more than you could do anything about a kamikaze flight diving into a carrier in World...
...most Americans, the horrifying thing about the news from Lebanon was the number of Marines lost, the gross body count. But for more than 200 sets of loved ones, the Beirut explosion was only incidentally a massacre; for them, one particular casualty-the son, husband, brother, buddy-made the week's bad news an ordeal. The families and friends of four victims spoke with TIME last week...
...radioman and Beirut volunteer, he was a year into his four-year service and planned, despite a C high school average, to go to college afterward. A Marine stint, his family told him, would smooth his U.S. citizenship application; the parents had finally applied last spring, just after Alex went to Lebanon...
...letter, Alex wrote that Beirut, with its shanties and vivid street life, reminded him of Juárez, his border-town birthplace. The family left Juárez when Alex was five; but his mother remembers that as a baby there he would throw a fit whenever she washed his hair. That does not seem long ago to his parents. Says Jesus Muñoz: "He was still like...