Word: retrospective
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...retrospect, there was a road not taken. A trip-wire force could have been lodged in Saudi Arabia, to serve America's initial goal of deterring an invasion, and the sanctions continued nearly forever. Kuwait would be remembered, but its liberation would not have become the high-profile litmus test of U.S. resolve. That option existed until November, when the allied presence was characterized as an offensive force and the United Nations deadline of Jan. 15 was imposed...
...ironies, of course, begin to multiply as soon as a life comes unraveled: in retrospect, everything seems an augury. One night before, the local TV station had announced that the conditions -- 106 degrees heat, gale-force winds and drought-stricken hills -- were the best for a fire in 100 years. That day, at lunch, I had been talking with a friend whose mother had just died, about the pathos of going through old belongings. And when, at the optician's office that evening, my doctor stepped out to go and sniff at what he thought might be a fire...
Taken in by an American family in 1980, Arn Chorn is now 22 and a college student in Rhode Island. He understands in retrospect that he was brainwashed into becoming a Khmer Rouge. Yet he also remembers how thrillingly fright and excitement mixed. He can still describe the sweaty terror before an attack, squatting in the reeds, trembling. Then the fear metabolized into adrenaline, enhanced by the delight of pumping an automatic rifle. "Sometimes," he says, "you enjoy yourself in battle...
...solution, in retrospect, was simple. "If you start with a hang-glider- size plane and triple its size up to a 90-ft. wingspan while keeping its weight the same," MacCready explains, "the power needed to fly it goes down by a factor of three" -- to only about 0.4 horsepower, in fact, which a trained cyclist can generate for many minutes at a time...
...retrospect, however, Rice says she has no feelings, "positive or negative," about the departing president-beyond a general sense that he was never receptive to the ideas of her companions...