Word: blunting
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...cruise missiles and bombers are not going to solve this problem," said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week. In an assessment of the Soviet Union's defeat in Afghanistan written for the U.S. Army in 1996, a retired Afghan general and his American co-author were blunt. "A guerrilla war," they wrote, "is not a war of technology against peasantry. Rather, it is a contest of endurance and national will. The side with the greatest moral commitment will hold the ground...Tactics for conventional war will not work...
...many Afghans were maimed by toys and packets of cigarettes dropped from planes--and booby-trapped with explosives. Other refugees have been snapping up the rations, but even if everyone were willing to eat them, the roughly quarter-million U.S. food packets dropped last week couldn't begin to blunt the nation's hunger. Though the country's borders are officially closed, refugees are beginning to trickle over the mountains into Quetta and Peshawar...
Although famous for her blunt and sometimes stinging advice, Hax defends herself. “I can be harsh,” she admits, “But at the same time I have a range of styles. When someone is in obvious pain, I can be sympathetic and compassionate. I am just having fun laughing at myself and at the reader. And you have to realize that I am not trying to be cruel...
...Laden's al-Qaeda network were virtually certain. But now the government was telling the people directly: We're in danger. As if to underscore the point, the Web address for the warning included the code "skyfall," before the bureau changed it. A young aide had chosen the blunt word only so she could find the statement easily on her computer, but there was no doubt that her fears were also ours...
...Others remember him as unremarkable, a "normal" guy but one who could be easily offended, particularly in the face of ridicule or perceived injustice. "Nothing he did stood out," says Khaled Kattan. "I remember sometimes he was too frank and blunt with people. If he did not like something about someone, he would go up and say it to his face. He was a little bit pure, but he would not bury any grievance in his heart and try and get back at you later. At the same time, he was easygoing and he participated in our group activities...