Word: coups
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...lead at the polls was so commanding -- he had 87% of the vote -- that few doubted his hold on power. Last week he made history again, this time in an ignominious way: he became the first elected President of a former Soviet republic to be ousted in a paramilitary coup...
...demonstrators. Ioseliani defended the use of terror to enforce a state of emergency in Tbilisi, but it has not lessened the danger of civil war breaking out in other parts of Georgia, especially in the western regions, where armed Gamsakhurdia supporters have already challenged the new regime. The coup leaders also face difficulties with the republic's restive South Ossetian and Abkhasian minorities, who are pressing for their own independence...
THIS MUCH, at least, is definitely true: In 1963, there was a coup d'etat brewing at the highest levels of the government of a superpower, involving both the number-two man in the succession hierarchy and the heads of the military-industrial complex, which feared the lessening of Cold War tensions if a reform agenda was allowed to go ahead. But the superpower was not the USA, and it was not LBJ out to get JFK; it was the Soviet Union, with Leonid Brezhnev preparing to depose Nikita Khrushchev. Coming soon to a theater near...
Instead, Stone leads us to believe that what happened on November 22, 1963 was nothing less than a "coup d'etat" by Lyndon Johnson and the military-industrial complex, who feared that John F. Kennedy '40 would wind down Vietnam and the Cold War and thus put them all out to pasture. This theory is based on nothing more than the say-so of a mysterious character who identifies himself only as "X" (George Kennan, maybe?) and claims to have been involved in running U.S. covert operations. At this point, we wind up, as Stone's protagonist, Jim Garrison, says...
Truly. Never mind the ballistics, watch the politics. For Stone's coup theory to work, there are a couple of historical premises that must be established. One, Kennedy really was going to wind down the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. Two, Johnson wrecked everything. Three it was all planned--so sayeth "X," who appears to be the unfortunately named L. Fletcher Prouty (what could the L. stand for that's worse than Fletcher?), a cranky aide to the Joint Chiefs of Staff...