Word: consensus
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...Iranian diplomats can be faulted for many things: they play checkers instead of chess, obsessed with winning the next move instead of the game. Iranian politics too can be criticized for factional infighting, and a chronic inability to forge consensus. Some observers say these weaknesses stem from Iranians' habitual dishonesty, indeed a whole culture of communication that prizes insincerity, and makes it impossible to know what an Iranian actually means. This line of analysis leads us straight into the woods, mainly because it involves a faulty understanding of how language shapes Iranian social relations...
...broad spectrum of Iran's political factions, including reformists, backs a nuclear program as a way of ensuring the country's regional status. Former President Mohammad Khatami might have made the point more softly, but consensus existed long before the arrival of firebrand Ahmadinejad, who makes the case in louder, more menacing tones. There's certainly disagreement over how much Iran should risk in running this course, and what incentives it should settle for in suspending it altogether. But there is a core belief here that without a nuclear program, Iran will be blocked from consolidating its growing influence...
...after 9/11, a long-standing thought inside the government was that al-Qaeda might have been simply taking its time in mounting the next big hit. At a 2003 meeting of virtually all the top intelligence, foreign-policy and law-enforcement officials in the White House Situation Room, the consensus was that the next attack would be as large as or larger than 9/11. Officials expected a long period of planning and an attack timed to coincide with roiling events--a major assassination, the start of an armed conflict--that would provide synergies of turmoil and create the perception that...
...There's no consensus on this war. Before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Americans did support the President's decision, but that majority has evaporated. There's nothing like the audience's rooting interest that '40s war movies could take for granted. Americans today support the troops, but not the war that, like McLoughlin and Jimeno, they are trapped...
...church whose focus doesn't include God. (The Rev.) Canon Francis C. Zanger Charleston, South Carolina, U.S. After reading the interview with Jefferts Schori, I have no doubt as to why the Episcopal Church in the U.S. is "rocked by controversy." Any denomination guided by "a reasonable conclusion and consensus that gay and lesbian Christians are full members," instead of following God's word, the Bible, is on the road to destruction. Not only are the Presiding Bishop and the Episcopal Church wrong in their consensus that practicing gays and lesbians can be Christians, but they are also horribly wrong...