Word: fleeting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...knows the all too familiar experience of being ordered out of port on short notice, racing to a featureless coordinate at sea, and then circling for days without ever knowing all of the reasons why. There was no uncertainty at all among the sailors and airmen of the Sixth Fleet ships that steamed watchfully in the eastern Mediterranean all last week. They knew from TIME'S cover story on the outbreak of civil war in Jordan (see cut), as well as from other sources, that Washington "was carefully leaking muted warnings of U.S. intervention"?and that the fleet...
...journey took on fresh and weightier significance. Although concern about Soviet activities in the Middle East was genuine enough, the original decision to take the trip had contained elements of routine flag showing and pre-election headline grabbing. Now the excursion assumed an air of urgency. The fleet he visits will have just returned from action stations where it was poised for combat. Conversations in Rome, Belgrade, Madrid and London will have less small talk, more serious discussion about where matters stand in the Middle East and between East and West...
...intervening in what they considered an Arab civil war and reasoned that the cost to the U.S. in terms of Arab enmity would not justify trying to save Hussein. On military grounds, they considered landlocked Jordan a logistical nightmare. Moreover, at the height of the crisis, the Sixth Fleet had no way of transporting Marines into Jordan by helicopter; Guam and its choppers were still five days to the west. Militarily, however, the Chiefs had little objection to providing Hussein's troops with carrier-based tactical air support...
RICHARD NIXON'S show-the-flag visit to the Mediterranean is an indirect tribute to the boldness of recent Soviet strategy. Since the debacle of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, the Russians have managed to challenge the U.S. Sixth Fleet as the paramount naval power in the area, to loosen Washington's already tenuous diplomatic foothold in the Arab world, and to establish a disturbing Communist presence along most of the southern flank of NATO. The Soviets have managed these feats by deploying a large, modern naval force in the Mediterranean, and by artfully cementing relations with regimes...
...deliberations, interrupted Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban's private visit to England to press for a promise to release more Arab prisoners. The Israelis agreed, among other things, to give up the two Algerian intelligence agents they had been holding. For its part, the U.S., which had dispatched Sixth Fleet ships with 1,500 battle-ready Marines to the Eastern Mediterranean when the planes were skyjacked, added more ships to the task force. Most notably, the helicopter carrier Guam, with combat Marines aboard, sailed from Norfolk naval base to join the fleet...