Word: mightly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...announcement of the trials with the utmost seriousness. "Outrageous," declared State Department Spokesman Walter Ramsay. "They had no business taking them hostage and they have no business putting them on trial." At the White House, Press Secretary Jody Powell repeated President Carter's warning that the U.S. might resort to "other remedies"-meaning military action-if the captives were harmed...
...threat of imminent trials capped a week in which the Carter Administration waged a fierce campaign to focus the world's attention on the hostages, hoping that this might help to ensure their safety. Explained a top Administration official: "We are trying to say, 'Look, world, nobody has seen the hostages. We don't know what is happening to them.' " Vice President Walter Mondale complained that "even prisoners of war are guaranteed certain standards of human treatment, but these standards are being dragged in the dirt." Rosalynn Carter voiced the same refrain in campaign appearances...
Meanwhile, Carter opened a new and even more aggressive diplomatic offensive to end the stalemate, and for a time there were signs that events might finally be shifting in favor of the U.S. in at least two ways...
...minute sequence involving the Starfleet's San Francisco headquarters must have cost at least $2 million) but also damages the rest of the show--the half-hour wasted on James T. Kirk's procession to the Enterprise, and the net loss of 20 minutes to uninteresting preparations for departure, might have been used profitably elsewhere to put more content into the film...
What's worst about this jingoist response is that it obscures the one valuable lesson America might glean from the events in Iran. Air-mobile divisions wouldn't have helped avoid the taking of the hostages; but a more open-minded appraisal of the domestic dynamics of Third World nations, instead, coupled with a more visible reluctance to support repressive dictatorships, surely would. No amount of money spent on flexible military capabilities will protect our "vital interests"--like Middle East oil--as effectively as a wholehearted effort to understand cultural forces like Islam...