Word: commandant
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...George Bush had ordered American forces to prevent Panamanian soldiers from reaching the headquarters where Manuel Noriega was bottled up, the U.S. surely had the military muscle to do the job. The 12,000 U.S. combat troops under the Southern Command far outstrip the 6,000-man Panama Defense Forces in both training and hardware. But civilian and military casualties would have been high, if only because the vital military installations are situated in downtown Panama City. As a Marine officer pointed out, "Even an M-1 rifle can kill a lot of people in a crowd...
...were not sure what was happening, but I felt something had to be done" was the way Gerald Ford explained his recapture of the cargo ship Mayaguez in the Gulf of Thailand in 1975. "Let's do it" was Reagan's simple command that sent F-14 pilots aloft on a risky mission in the Mediterranean that apprehended and forced down the Egyptian airliner carrying the hijackers of the cruise ship Achille Lauro...
...facts seem stacked against Bush. But he has not had his day in public, and his command process is more secretive than that of any recent President. We know that young Panamanian officers responded to U.S. pressure to rid their country of Manuel Noriega, that we were aware of the plot, involved to some undetermined degree and that a few yards away were some of the 12,000 trained and armed American troops stationed in Panama. Does opportunity ever knock so hard...
...power to summon others and the ability to command attention rank high among the tools of any leader. Last week George Bush wielded both of them artfully in pursuing his long-promised bid to become "the education President." During two crisply photogenic autumn days at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, he convened his Cabinet and the nation's Governors for a historic summit that raised hopes of new national leadership, if not new federal funds, to address the critical problems facing American public education...
...disproportion seems to be based on economic as well as ethnic factors. Air crashes, which entail millions of dollars in losses and mainly affect the affluent middle class, especially outside the U.S., command far more coverage than less glamorous causes of violent death. On the same day that the New York Times was giving front-page play to both air accidents last month, it carried three paragraphs at the bottom of an inside page about rebel action in Kabul, Afghanistan, that killed twelve people and wounded 17. Also in the crash aftermath, an alleged coup attempt in Burkina Faso that...