Word: point-blank
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Though he could never have come to power without Boumedienne's unwavering support, Ben Bella in recent months had decided to get rid of the army men in his Cabinet. One reason may have been Ben Bella's anger at the army's point-blank refusal to send "liberation" troops to the Congo, Portuguese Guinea and Israel-as proposed by the President. In any event, the first officer to be ousted, he decided, would be Foreign Minister Abdel Aziz Bouteflika, a former F.L.N. commissar under Boumedienne and a close friend of the army commander. Then, after...
...Administration sent Morgan a 68-page draft that went at least part way toward appeasing Fulbright. To Morgan, that was murder: he was convinced that many Congressmen would seize upon separate bills as an opportunity to kill economic aid altogether. "I fought back," he says. "I told the President point-blank that the day you take economic aid away from military aid, you won't have a bill." The result: a revised, 20-page draft that met Morgan's objections...
...Congressional Palace in the U.S.-guarded International Zone, Imbert snorted that Guzmán was "a Bosch puppet." Imbert refused point-blank to dissolve his own Government of National Reconstruction, argued vehemently that Guzmán would be tantamount to turning the country over to the Communists. Bundy and the others repeatedly pleaded with Imbert to step gracefully aside. Each time the answer was the same. "Why the hell did you bring all those troops here if you weren't going to stop Communism...
Wearing their caps backwards to distinguish themselves from the rebels, Imbert's troops proceeded to batter the rebels in a full-scale battle. Clanking through the narrow streets, loyalist tanks fired point-blank into every house suspected of harboring rebels. So vicious was the fighting that a hapless taxi driver who got out to fix a flat was gunned down and lay there a day because no one dared venture into the street. Rebels trying to escape through the rat-infested sewers were flushed out with tear...
...rebels refused point-blank to join Imbert. "We want a constitutional government," declared a rebel spokesman. "We flatly reject any coalitions." Caamaño repudiated the ceasefire agreement, denounced the OAS, and declared that he would now place his case before the U.N. As for the U.S., the rebels railed against the troops hemming them in, ticked off lists of "atrocities," threatened an all-out attack. Said Caamaño's armed-forces minister: "It doesn't matter that we'll all be massacred. Unless the Americans clear out, we're going to attack...