Word: firsts
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...next day we're off, Varadero to Cienfuegos. First passengers, from a roadside crowd of 15 or 20: a mother-and-child duo, the mother skinny and snaggle-toothed, the baby perfect and in pink, 11 months old, little black shoes, shiny; they're headed home. We roll with them past horse-drawn wagons and slow, lanky cows. Egrets skim over the road, perpendicular. Air warm, sky overcast. The car screams...
...Giron, home of the Cuban monument to the heroes of the Bay of Pigs. Our merengue tape, bought at a gas station, tinkles quietly from the speakers. We offer them--we offer everyone--water, cookies, crackers. They decline, and like most riders, this family says nothing unless we speak first; they don't even talk to one another. They watch the countryside pass, content. We are surprised, with them and most riders, that they do not want to know where we're from. Why are they not curious about us, the Americans here to save them? At their house...
...taxi. They fill up the Volvo while we wait. We meet the third passenger, Dale, an English-speaking med student from St. Kitts, who decides he's sick of speaking Spanish, so he'll ride to Cienfuegos with us. He's studying Spanish there, the first year of seven he'll spend in Cuba on his way to a medical degree. We follow the taxi into Cienfuegos, drop off Dale at his barbed wire-surrounded dormitory, check into a hotel with red light bulbs and a lounge singer plowing through the high points of the Billy Joel songbook...
Russia's generals have learned some hard lessons. After the blood-soaked debacle of the last attempt to subdue Chechnya during 1994-1996, war gamers went back to the doctrine of the ferocious Russian who first conquered the Caucasus, 19th century general Alexei Yermolov: use siege warfare rather than frontal assault. Make slow advances under cover of heavy guns and bombardment. Avoid close encounters with a lightly armed but fearsome enemy. Applying these principles in their current campaign, which began in late September, Moscow's generals aimed to grind down the rebel force until the remnants would flee back into...
...Minutka Square battle was the first real setback for Russia's military since it launched its "counter-terror operation," as Moscow insists on calling the war against Chechen independence. Russian generals are once again figures of respect, not the butt of jokes. The three ground commanders, Colonel General Viktor Kazantsev, Lieut. General Gennadi Troshev and Major General Vladimir Shamanov, were recently named heroes of the Russian Federation. The country's self-confidence has flourished along with its armed forces. And Putin's supporters happily predict that a victory will propel him to the presidency next July...