Word: downplaying
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...profile of Baghdad's most notorious moonlighters, officers in Iraqi security forces who draw a government paycheck while working with sectarian militias on the side. Still, the presence of U.S. forces might have deterred the kidnappers. Chiarelli has been one of the most prominent military figures to downplay the potential gains of increasing the number of U.S. troops in Iraq. But he acknowledges the effect of troops on the ground. "Those things that are purely sectarian, normally our mere presence, the mere presence of coalition forces, causes them to stop, at least as long as we're there," he says...
...Before leaving Washington, Paulson did his best to downplay expectations from the grandly named "Strategic Economic Dialogue" his delegation will conduct with the Chinese. There would be no big announcement after the two days of talks, Paulson told one interviewer, stressing that this was the start of a "long-term dialogue." His downbeat spin is hardly surprising: Beijing has been fending off U.S. demands for years on the issue of currency exchange rates, and also intellectual property rights (meaning pirated movies and brand-name goods). In 1996 this correspondent was told by a White House economist who had just returned...
...outfit’s advantage. It’s like wearing a particularly sweet belt: not necessary for the survival of an outfit, but an interesting and notable addition. Harvard women are not, in general, daylight exhibitionists, so I doubt that fashion’s current tendency to downplay boobage will affect their classroom wardrobe all that much. Harvard women are more likely to sport low-cut shirts during the nighttime hours. Unfortunately, those revealing spandex tank tops, which many Harvard ladies like to wear to parties, oftentimes without a bra, are not in style anymore...
...doing much to stop them. The Association of Muslim Scholars, an eminent Sunni group, continues to circulate DVDs that feature interviews with Sunnis who tell stories of displacement by Mahdi Army loyalists and government forces from the Ministry of the Interior. For their part, al-Sadr's allies downplay the specter of an Iraq broken forever along sectarian divides. "It is natural for the Sunni families to leave their homes in places with a Shi'ite majority," said Sheik Salem Fariji, an official in Najaf with al-Sadr's office, which runs housing programs for Shi'ites. "This...
Many fans under 40—the defensive ones, like me—tend to downplay baseball’s historical gravity. History is nice, and great, and important, but it doesn’t sell video games. I wish it did. I’d await EA Sports’ Scully ’07—after the ancient Dodgers broadcaster, Vin—just as eagerly as I do Madden ’07. Problem is, none of the other kids would play with...