Word: vital
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Last week's press protests undoubtedly strike some Americans as special pleading. Says the Washington Post's Bradlee: "Their attitude is, 'There you go, bleeding again!' " But any break, even for only a few days' time, in the vital U.S. tradition of reasonably open press coverage during military combat has implications that are exceedingly troubling (see ESSAY). Sums up the U.P.I.'s veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas: "The American people should not have been left in the dark." Indeed, they should never be left in the dark...
...loneliness is his strength and his mandate for swift, decisive action. Fear momentarily is his ally, giving pause to foreign enemies and holding domestic public opinion in suspension for vital hours. In the ashes of failure and death, in the uncertainty of crisis there almost always lies opportunity for strokes of great leadership. It is one of the perverse and melancholy facts of the presidency, not wished by any White House occupant but as certain as night and day. Effective Presidents move quickly beyond mourning, beyond events...
...ironies of Roth's career is that his style is so immediate, his sense of phrasing so vital, that readers cannot be blamed for blurring the distinction between the writer and his creation. Even Claire Bloom, with whom Roth shares a "paperless marriage," sometimes slips and says "you" when referring to Zuckerman. Bloom, 52, and the novelist, 50, have been together seven years. Roth's only marriage ended when his wife, Margaret Martinson, was killed in a 1968 car accident. The couple had been separated for five years; they had no children...
...sooner or later. It is impossible to imagine a severing of our defense commitment to NATO, although small alteration are always possible. Much of the rest, and most of the Air Force, is based in the U.S. The Navy patrols all the world's major bodies of water, including vital areas rarely in the news-such as the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf, where the major crisis could cripple the industrial world...
...mobile forces, then a real threat to our readiness concerning such areas as the Persian Gulf could soon exist. It's impossible to tell so early; but the warning is clear. The U.S. is in danger of allowing essentially secondary objectives, with sometimes doubtful plans, to cloud our true vital inter...