Word: sordid
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...members of Knott's Intelligence and Reconnaissance unit are mavericks with high test scores and a low opinion of exposing themselves to hostile fire. Nearly half of them were casualties of a battle in the Saar. The survivors are an antidote to the Dirty Dozen and their sordid spin-offs in film and fiction. The oldest members of the outfit are called Mother and Father; there is a no-obscenity rule, and the favorite pastime is not poker but a demonic version of bridge. The men also share their reading. As Knott, ever the illuminating ironist, puts...
...striking that the harshest critics of the Begin government in this sordid fiasco are Jews, not Gentiles; Israelis, not the Diaspora. Nor were those assailing the government exclusively members of the Labor opposition. The right-win newspaper Maariv wrote: "This whole affair, which outrages and disgusts, cannot be ended simply by a statement of sorrow. Someone is responsible here and has to take the consequences." And Eitan Haber, military correspondent for the pro-Begin paper Yediot Ahronot claimed: "Government ministers and senior commanders already knew during the hours of Thursday night and Friday morning that a terrible massacre was taking...
Normally, that is all there would have been to it, and the nasty, sordid little murder would have taken its place in local lore. But now the case may also earn the defendants a permanent niche in law-school textbooks, plus a place on death row. The reason is an apparently unique question of double jeopardy. It arises from the fact that while Becky Heath's body was found in La Grange, Ga., her murderers picked her up, or perhaps kidnaped her, from her home 45 miles away in Phenix City, Ala. And after some of the defendants...
...bugs and wiretaps placed by the FBI in a windowless Bronx warehouse recorded a sordid tale of dealings between New Jersey's Schiavone Construction Co. and a subcontracting firm run by William Masselli, a soldier in the Genovese Mafia clan. But the FBI did not bring up these taps during the confirmation hearings last year of Labor Secretary Raymond Donovan, who was a vice president and part owner of Schiavone, even though Donovan's name came up in the recorded conversations. FBI Director William Webster last week sought to shift the blame for this lapse away from...
...that distinction, in a democracy, is everything. Moneygrubbing is unsavory. Power grabbing, the plot to steal an election (which, weirdly enough, was already safely assured), was infinitely more serious. It was an attack on the American idea. That is important because if America loses its idea, it becomes merely sordid and fallen and dangerous...