Word: united
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...story, recounted in a grinding, realistic style that is unlike Brian De Palma's usual manner of playing fast and loose with death, is simple to describe. A small unit under the command of a Sergeant Meserve (Sean Penn, in an uncompromising performance) sets off on a long-range reconnaissance mission. On Meserve's orders, it stops at a peasant village, where it abducts a young girl and sadistically binds and gags her for the many awful hours of their trek. The girl, who is heartbreakingly played by a delicate newcomer named Thuy Thu Le, will serve as "portable...
...train who reminds him of the long-ago victim. In the dream, Meserve -- arrogant, competent, headlong (in short, a born American leader) -- is an archetype of the worst in the national character. Eriksson -- frail-looking but articulate and morally alert -- is the beleaguered best. The remainder of the unit is, of course, the hulking, muddled majority, all too willing to be conned by anyone who seems to be sure of his goals, however perverse. Their victim represents all of the innocents who, by accident, find themselves in the path of Yankee imperialism...
...from being an isolated outrage, such a botch-up is shockingly common, claims Baden, co-director of the forensic sciences unit of the New York state police. In a new book, Unnatural Death (Random House; $17.95), he and co- author Judith Adler Hennessee present a fascinating and disturbing picture of a shamefully inadequate U.S. coroner system. About 7% of the 2 million Americans who die annually meet an untimely end, by murder, suicide or accident. By law, such deaths must be investigated. Though the public may believe that every coroner is a skilled sleuth like television's Quincy, fewer than...
...raid was carried out by two dozen members of the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, which reports only to chief of military intelligence Amnon Shachak. As Israeli jets flew overhead to drown out the noise, a darkened CH-53 helicopter landed after midnight on the outskirts of Jibchit. Lightly armed with silencer-equipped Uzis, pistols and a few small explosives, the commandos crept toward Obeid's house in the center of the village. One team guarded the neighborhood while another raided the house and abducted Obeid and two men who worked as bodyguards. Another man was killed by the Israelis when...
...story has all the elements of a good airplane read: an energetic and engaging protagonist who transcends humble Brooklyn Jewish origins to become a symbol of his generation's promise before he is 30; war years in which he serves as a member of a dashing documentary-film unit, enabling him to meet all the right people from Cairo to London and to see just enough action to lend authenticity to The Young Lions, the epic war novel that made him famous; a middle passage in which he fritters away critical and popular esteem while pursuing the good life...