Word: grimness
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Lowdown: Less than a month after the Pentagon celebrated meeting its annual recruiting goals for the first time since 1973, this report serves as a grim reality check. "During economic downturns, higher numbers of well-qualified candidates seek to enlist and the military can temporarily rely less on waivers for those with academic deficits or criminal records. But a weak economy is no formula for a strong military. Once the economy begins to grow again, the challenge of finding enough high-quality recruits will return...
...said would not be fair. Abdullah continues to insist that Karzai's re-election was illegitimate, underscoring the fact that the election's outcome leaves Obama saddled with an Afghan partner who is even more discredited than he was at its onset. News from the battlefront is equally grim. October saw the highest monthly death toll of U.S. soldiers since the war began, and on Nov. 3 five British soldiers were killed when fired on by an Afghan policeman - it is still unclear if the shooter was a Taliban plant. (See pictures of Afghanistan's dangerous Korengal Valley...
...President in March announced a "comprehensive new strategy" for waging war in Afghanistan and promptly dispatched a fresh general to implement it in June. But having received General Stanley McChrystal's grim assessment of the situation on the ground and his request for reinforcements, Obama has spent the past two months - as U.S. deaths in Afghanistan have reached historic highs - weighing the wisdom of both decisions. In Washington, backers of McChrystal and his manpower-intensive counterinsurgency strategy say delaying the dispatch of reinforcements endangers the mission, but those who are more skeptical of the military's ability to turn...
...East Jerusalem. At least Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was offering to restrain settlement activity, Clinton said, but Arab leaders, whom Obama had hoped would make reciprocal gestures toward normalization of ties with Israel, were not buying. For Arab League secretary Amr Moussa, Clinton's message offered a grim outlook for the Administration's peace efforts: "I still wait until we have our meetings and decide what we are going to do," Moussa reportedly said on Monday in Morocco, where Clinton was meeting with Arab leaders. "But failure is in the atmosphere all over...
Finally there's the cover. It may not be a great way to judge a book, but it's not a bad way to move one. It shows a picture of a grim Adam and a buxom Eve (apparently using an early version of that double-stick tape J.Lo deploys to keep her dress in place), plus a Charlton Heston-y God. "The First Book of the Bible Graphically Depicted!" it proclaims. "Nothing Left Out!" plus "Adult Suprvision Recommended for Minors." That's catnip to at least one section of society. "I have a feeling," says Weil, "this book could...