Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Early in March, an elaborate coup plot against Saddam was hatched that required the cooperation of the feuding Kurds. But within hours of the attack, the entire plan collapsed. In the first stage, as planned, Talabani's 10,000 troops launched an opening skirmish against the Iraqi army's 5th Corps along the Kurdish border near Kirkuk. Barzani, who has a force of equal strength, refused to get involved in the coup. Shi'ite insurgents next failed to undertake their strike against Iraqi forces in the southern part of the country, and an Iraqi armored division that was to mutiny...
Police in the Philippines suspect thatRamzi Yousef, the alleged ringleader in the World Trade Center bomb plot, also had plans to bombCIAheadquarters in Virginia, the U.S. and Israeli embassies in Manila and United Airlines jets crossing the Pacific. The accusations, detailed in just-released police reports, are based on records seized in a January raid on Yousef's Manila apartment. Police also believe Yousef had plans to assassinate Pope John Paul II, who visited the Philippines in January. Yousef, awaiting trial in New York for the1993 World Trade Center bombingthat killed six people and injured 1,000, also is suspected...
Hollywood makes two kinds of Ireland movies--the working class urban fantasy and the fey rural fantasy. "Circle of Friends," the latest Irish presence in American theaters, divides its time between Dublin and the countryside, but the movie could be set in Poughkeepsie as far as the plot is concerned; in this formulaic love-story, the setting doesn't intrude for a moment on the predicatable progress of the romance...
...plot grinds on to its telegraphed conclusion, there are some genuine amusements. Eve and her boyfriend Aidan are by far the most appealing characters; their conversation is witty and affectionate, far more so than Jack and Benny's, and their sexual explorations are endearingly funny. Sean is the classic villain who we love to hate, and Alan Cumming's comic routine never wears thin...
What Le Carre offers readers instead of bells and whistles is hard to summarize but clearly present once again in Our Game (Knopf; 302 pages; $24). There is a sinuous plot, leisurely introduced, whose coils become increasingly constricting. There is crisp, intelligent dialogue, much of it riding an undercurrent of menace. And there is a hero who does not see himself as heroic but who struggles with inner demons as much as with the forces arrayed against...