Word: plain
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...camps near the Demilitarized Zone to Army installations in the marshy Mekong Delta, McNamara probed two questions over and over: Were field commanders overestimating Communist strength? Were the Allied forces on hand being used at something less than maximum effectiveness? Rather early in his five-day visit, it became plain that the Secretary thought the answer to both questions...
...North Vietnamese are also using ambushes, in conjunction with skillful conventional artillery fire, on the plain just below the DMZ. After digging in with their guns, they lie in wait for the Marines they know must eventually come to try to root them out; that is how the leathernecks ran into the bloody ambush just north of their base at Con Thien three weeks ago. By burying some of their guns in deep holes and caves and moving others from place to place, the North Vietnamese have kept the Marines under continual pressure. Last week they took some heavy pounding...
Some expressions are hard to punctuate. Take the phrase "How about that"; too sprightly for a plain ordinary . , it is sometimes too ironic to justify an ebullient ! . More often than not, isn't it really a question...
...these attributions--U.S. officials, White House sources--are the easy ones. The newspaper reader also encounters a large and voluble crew of authoritative sources, reliable authorities, analysts, associates of the Senator, friends of the Vice President, those who know and plain old informed sources. (Even cognoscenti once had a certain vogue.) With such an embarrassment of reliability, how do you know who it is upon whom you are relying? It is clear, for instance, that "a source" is not on a par with "the Highest Authority," but common sense is not always a good guide. You have to weigh...
...when Mrs. Laredo brought herself to match her husband's pianissimo. For those who heard the second movement of the "Kreutzer" last night--another of Beethoven's exquisite sets of variations--it will be quite a while before they hear anything to match it for gentleness, delicacy or just plain prettiness...