Word: diminisher
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...release of the 10 Westerners still missing in Lebanon -- among them, five Americans. But if Israeli officials hoped this timely gesture might lower the heat emanating from the Oval Office, they were sorely disappointed. To remind Israel of its debt to the U.S., and maybe even to diminish the importance of the relative power Israel now wields over the fate of the five American hostages, Bush said, "Just months ago, American men and women in uniform risked their lives to defend Israelis in the face of Iraqi Scud missiles...
That is the final weapon of monsters: they beguile us with our own frailty. By way of science or theology, arguments Pavlovian or Paulinian, we diminish their horrors as we seek guarantees of forgiveness for our own capacity for error. We do this even though we know that humanity's "errors" -- our bigotry or anger or lust or selfishness or greed -- will go on churning out the accursed creatures. Like our forebears, we have got in the habit of monsters. If we are to escape their terror, we must not distort their significance. If they frighten us, we must remember...
...think Clarence Thomas stands for pretty much the same thing, is that by opposing racial preferences we stand for black strength rather than weakness. The thing that disturbs me about affirmative action, about preferences, is that they can and will be taken away. They will diminish over time. And in the interim they encourage us to believe that redress is our power. I don't take any simpleminded black-and-white view and say racial preferences have never done a bit of good for anybody. All I've tried to do is point out the down side and that...
...losses mount, one of Lloyd's biggest problems -- the desertion of its names -- will undoubtedly grow. Lloyd's could then face a capital crunch that would diminish its capacity to take on new business. The number of names providing capital to the syndicates jumped from 7,000 in 1973 to 32,500 in 1988, but has fallen to 26,500 since then, largely because Lloyd's suddenly looks like a risky proposition...
France, which is a NATO member but pulled out of the alliance's military structure in 1966, made moves to fill this gap in such a manner as to revive old suspicions that it was out to diminish the U.S. role in Europe. Paris would have preferred a strictly European rapid-reaction force that would not be part of NATO and could be sent anywhere in the world. Washington opposed the idea as a potential first stage in the creation of a European force in which it would have no role. French officials immediately began soft-pedaling their idea...