Word: pleadings
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...still a great job: seeing movies and writing about them.) But come December we finally have a function that other people can appreciate. Friends ask which of the big Christmas offerings they should spend their money on. Our media outlets find space for lavishly illustrated reviews. Studio flacks plead with us to come to an Early Unveiling of a Very Special Film. From January to November our presence at a screening is thought to be harmful to the play a movie gets in our publications. But in December our reviews, and more important our votes in the critics' groups...
...instructive to look at parts of southern Iraq from which coalition forces have already been withdrawn. There Shi'ite militias backed by Iran have taken control, intimidating government forces into submission and terrorizing Sunnis. On several occasions Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shi'ite, has had to plead with radical Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr to restrain his fighters from killing soldiers and police--with limited results...
That fighting philosophy has defined Pelosi's leadership style as well. Her predecessor Dick Gephardt was known as "Ironbutt" for the hours he spent sitting and wheedling his colleagues. "Gephardt would plead with people to do the right thing, and they would know that there was no penalty for it," recalls a veteran senior aide on Capitol Hill. Not Pelosi. "Once you cross her," he says, "your life is not going to be very pleasant...
Second, you don't get to assume the success of your intentions then plead a shrugging "Who knew?" when they don't pan out. I also am in favor of toppling dictators, establishing democracy and watching it spread painlessly throughout every region where there is no experience of it. Not only that: I am in favor of turning sand into ice cream and guaranteeing a cone to every child in the Middle East. But you can't turn sand into ice cream. That is not a defect in the execution of the idea. It is a defect in the idea...
...physique--once strong and upright, now stooped and limp--recovers from the ordeal, Waddah's psyche will carry some scars forever: the terror of imprisonment, the dread of not knowing whether he would live another day, the degradation of torture and the mortification of having to grovel and plead for his life. "For five weeks, I was less than a human being," he says. "Nobody should have to go through that." The disturbing truth, however, is that many of his countrymen...