Word: chickening
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Such blunt talk is rare in the U.S., where the White House and Congress are so far ignoring the arguments for wartime sacrifice in favor of a game of high-stakes political chicken. Neither side wants to be blamed for creating more pain after Washington cut spending and added $21 billion of new taxes as part of last year's deficit-reduction agreement. Bush is still nursing wounds for breaking his "no new taxes" pledge during the heated political battle. Yet virtually no one wants to rescind the budget deal and thereby widen the menacing federal deficit. While the Senate...
...partial, nor any promise of one; no further hints at a compromise deal; nothing. He would simply dig in deeper in Kuwait and dare Bush to put up or shut up on his threats to expel Iraq by force. That would amount to a hair-raising game of chicken in which Saddam would be betting that Bush would turn away first. Possibly, or so the Iraqi dictator seems to think, the American President will lose his nerve at the last second. Or perhaps Congress, the U.S. public and the allies will be so horrified by the potential casualties...
...greater possibility, of course, is that Bush is not bluffing, and a continued game of chicken will end in a devastating war that Saddam will lose. There is a nagging worry in both Washington and the Middle East that Saddam's lack of familiarity with the West is leading him into a gargantuan misjudgment that nobody will try to correct. Saddam's advisers during the crisis, says a friend of the dictator, "are not sophisticated people," and in any case they "treat him like a hero. No one dares to say, 'Mr. President, we might be heading for a disaster...
...personality. Others, however, strongly support Hume's greatness on the ground that the force of his personality definitely affected the age in which he lived. It is not a question of the cart before the horse in either case, merely the old problem of which came first, the chicken or the egg. In any case, there is much to be said on both sides...
Fearing persecution, ethnic Greeks chose to flee at the first word that border guards would not stand in their way. The countryside the refugees left behind is a wasteland of want. Virtually the only meat rural families saw last year was half a chicken distributed to each household on Nov. 29, the National Day. By contrast, even the icy refugee camps, such as Kalpaki in northern Greece, seem like paradise, providing shelter and plentiful food. Said a high- ranking Greek official: "The question is, Where does one draw the line? We don't want to make them feel too comfortable...