Word: yemen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Maybe we're living in the past because we feel all freaked out about the future. Turned off by coverage of terrorism in Bali and Israel, unrest in Venezuela, nukes in North Korea or arms laundering in Yemen, we gobbled up huge scoops of comfort news. Reading the newspaper this year was like reading that newspaper they hand out at Colonial Williamsburg, the one with headlines like SILVERSMITH THROWN IN GAOL FOR STEALING GOODIE SMITH'S PEANUT SOUPE RECIPE. O.K., I've never read that newspaper. But in the New York Times, which I occasionally read during boring meetings...
...weapons of mass destruction" and posed a "grave and growing danger." On last week's evidence, he's right. Within a few days, the following things happened: Spanish and American forces detained and then released a cargo of North Korean Scud missiles hidden in a stateless vessel bound for Yemen. The shipment was legal, but given the tinderbox nature of Yemeni society, irresponsible. Then Pyongyang announced that it intended to restart work on nuclear reactors that had been closed down since a crisis with the U.S. in 1994; spent fuel from the reactors could be used to build nuclear bombs...
...living in the past because we feel all freaked out about the future. It just feels good to retreat to topics previously explored and controversies already settled. Instead of devoting extra airtime to terrorism in Bali and Israel, unrest in Venezuela, nukes in North Korea or arms laundering in Yemen, we gobble up huge scoops of recycled news. Reading the newspapers this year was like settling back with some frozen-in-time Austrian Zeitung whose headline declares governor of Carinthia denies he worships Hitler. Wait, I think that really was in the Austrian papers this year...
...must demonstrate a willingness to use its resources to shed blood if it must. The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks came after the United States failed to respond to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia and the USS Cole in Yemen. The 1993 debacle in Somalia proved to al Qaeda that to defeat the United States, all you have to do is kill a few Americans on camera. The alternative to mounting an overwhelming response to challengers like Saddam is to fight a bloody retreat from world primacy. Anti-American unrest...
...menacing. At least Saddam Hussein claims to harbor no biological, chemical or nuclear arms. Kim freely admits to developing nuclear weapons in violation of international accords. And last week, in an apparent reaction to the high-seas interdiction of a shipment of North Korean-built Scud missiles bound for Yemen, the North announced it would restart a mothballed nuclear reactor that could produce enough weapons-grade plutonium for at least one atomic bomb a year...