Word: deltas
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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America wanted the Army's crack Delta Force to kick the door in--to turn Beirut into an Entebbe-style victory for the whole nation. Seeing the blood-smeared bodies of the terrorists on the nightly news would have given us a nationwide jolt of exaltation. Imagine post Super Bowl euphoria in every city in the country, complete with chants of "Born in the U.S.A., bud" and high-fives in the streets...
...lack of firepower available should it choose to launch a retaliatory raid. The aircraft carrier Nimitz, with at least 60 fighter- bombers and an amphibious landing force of 1,500 Marines, sits just off the Lebanese coast. A Delta Force unit reportedly stands ready on Cyprus, 100 miles from Beirut. The 100-plus Delta operatives are highly trained, but they have been used only twice against terrorists -- both times unsuccessfully. The 1980 Iranian hostage-rescue attempt was aborted in the desert when two helicopters broke down; during the invasion of Grenada the Delta commandos failed to reach the Richmond Hill...
...exhaustive coverage raised broader questions about the appropriate role of journalists in such a crisis. Pentagon Spokesman Michael Burch charged that news organizations were abetting the terrorists by reporting U.S. military movements, including the deployment of the Delta Force antiterrorist unit. Burch was especially angry at NBC and ABC, which reported within hours after the hijacking that Delta Force had departed the U.S.; NBC added that it was headed for the Mediterranean. "It may have been one of the reasons for the erratic movements of the TWA hijackers (between Beirut and Algiers)," said Burch. CBS, A.P. and U.P.I. refrained from...
Despite the ever present threat of raging cyclones, poor farmers from Bangladesh's overpopulated mainland have continued streaming onto the little islands in the Ganges delta in the hope of finding cultivable land. So far, the government has been reluctant to turn back the human tide, and unable to evacuate the chars before a cyclone roars through. Government advisories, officials in Dhaka claimed last week, enabled thousands of peasants to scramble to safety before the most recent cyclone struck. Yet at least 1.2 million of those caught in the maelstrom had no idea in advance that the whirlwind...
...opinions that might well be held by a novelist or some other talented fellow connected to the literary-scholarly axis. What about the fashionable practice of providing two endings for a novel, as John Fowles did in The French Lieutenant's Woman? "If novelists truly wanted to simulate the delta of life's possibilities, this is what they'd do," instructs Braithwaite. "At the back of the book would be a set of sealed envelopes in various colours. Each would be clearly marked on the outside: Traditional Happy Ending; Traditional Unhappy Ending . . . Cliffhanger Ending; Dream Ending; Opaque Ending; Surrealist Ending...