Word: counterpunching
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Somoza's forces fought back with savage efficiency. His strategy was to let the Sandinistas take temporary control of the cities, "using up their ammunition first," then to deliver a devastating counterpunch of firepower. Such tactics made a huge toll of innocent noncombatants inevitable. In the bloodiest fighting of a civil war that has simmered along for 18 months, many thousands died, most of them civilians. Carrying white flags, at least 200,000 refugees poured out of the barrios in Managua, León, Masaya and Matagaipa to escape the indiscriminate raids by government T-33 jets, rocket-equipped...
What he does supply is a fusillade of laughs. These are not so much punch lines as counterpunch lines. "You are considered an underdeveloped nation by underdeveloped nations," the Local Prince is told by the Columnist. "Disneyland-that's our code name for Washington," explains the Ambassador. Political in-joking is the sport of the evening, but some of it has a kind of frantic blandness about it: "Do you realize that the average age of Chiang Kai-shek's privates...