Word: pretexts
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...Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, embroiled in his own power struggle with Hamas, denounced the attack as ill-considered and counter-productive, saying it both "violated the national consensus" and potentially offered Israel "a pretext to launch a widespread military operation." What happens next may depend on the fate of Cpl. Shalit. Numerous countries are lobbying Palestinian leaders to do everything they can to secure his release, with Egyptian representatives apparently playing a key role. Several senior officials of the Hamas government have publicly called for Shalit to be released unharmed. The militants holding the young soldier have said they...
JAMES BAMFORD Author of A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies I far more trust the press than I do the Administration with judgment of what should be secret and what shouldn't. How many scandals has the Administration uncovered on its own? It was the press that uncovered Abu Ghraib, the massacre at Haditha, the abuses at Guantánamo. I think the press has been very responsible in the past. When I was at ABC, we always checked with the Administration in power when we thought we had something of concern...
...ambitions will inexorably fail due to implicit opposition from Beijing and Moscow. For China, it is primarily about oil thirst. But for Russia, it is about weapons industries lingering from the Soviet era. After Gorbachev, the Russian military complex stopped shipping AK-47s to the Middle East under the pretext of fighting capitalist imperialism. However, Russia’s brand-new capitalist mindset has led it to seek contracts with countries like Iran, Syria, and Libya to maintain capital inflow, and hence, some pride. Iranian leadership might lack legitimacy, but it has plenty of cash. Guess which nation...
...Iranian policy, he says, is to stabilize the nascent government in Baghdad, not to disrupt it. ?Security [in Iraq] is good for us because then there?s no pretext for foreign troops to remain,? he said. If Washington had proof that Iranian forces were operational in Iraq, then it should be produced, he insisted. Instead, he says, it is time for Tehran and Baghdad to establish a strong strategic relationship, replete with intelligence sharing and Iranian assistance in building up the Iraqi security forces, roles the U.S. currently holds a monopoly over. ?What we actually want inside Iraq today...
...crime lords (Ben Kingsley and Morgan Freeman). To call the film's plot labyrinthine is to understate the case. To say it works out with complete plausibility is to overstate it. Still, the story never runs completely off the rails and is, in any event, just a pretext for a lot of very sharp badinage by Jason Smilovic--a screenwriter who would have been at home writing for Cary Grant--for yards of terrific movie acting and for some well-timed direction by Paul McGuigan, who sometimes sidles toward pretension but never succumbs...