Word: thuggishly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...many foreign-aid workers and Somalis thought targeting Aidid was dangerously simplistic: other thuggish warlords are waiting to take his place. The U.N. action may have tipped the balance of power toward Aidid's enemies, rather than improved the chances for a political settlement. The peacekeepers inflicted more damage on Aidid than his opponents ever did, and they gleefully cheered the blue helmets on. The ferocity of the intervention may also have cast the U.N. as one more faction in the conflict...
...surrounded himself with a group of thuggish henchmen who specialized in murder and mayhem rather than the silkier arts of persuasion and blackmail once favored by the Mafia. Unlike tradition-bound gangsters who obeyed the vow of silence when arrested, some of these lieutenants cut deals with the law. Over the past year, 270 so-called pentiti provided unprecedented details of the Mob's workings and helped investigators tighten the net around its chief. According to some sources, the tip that led to Riina's arrest came from at least one such stool pigeon who put more faith...
...strange irony if the sociopath Saddam outlasts Bush, who attempted to sketch the outlines of a new world order in defeating him. That new world will present future Presidents with more dilemmas like prewar Iraq -- Syria and China are current examples -- where the moral costs of engaging with a thuggish regime must be weighed against the practical chances of coaxing it into the concert of nations -- and making a buck in the meantime. Bush's Iraq policy is not a perfect model for future action, but neither is it a perfect example of what to avoid...
Quayle in part plays the Spiro Agnew role to Bush's Richard Nixon. But when Agnew went after the "nattering nabobs" and student protesters, he did so with a thuggish menace that Quayle lacks. Quayle smacks more of Midwestern Americana, of The Music Man's Professor Harold Hill, and Quayle's lines about unmarried mothers sounded like an echo: "We got trouble, right here in River City!" -- brazen hussies strutting around town in a family way: Make your blood boil? Well, I should...
Nowhere across la Cosa Nostra is there a leader with the clout and thuggish charisma of John Gotti. Following the verdict, Gotti's distraught daughter, Vicki Agnelli, hurled an angry comment at reporters: "My father is the last of the Mohicans. They don't make men like him anymore. They never will." Law- enforcement officials surely hope she is right...