11-13-2007, 10:19 AM
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#428 (permalink)
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Belli Dura Despicio
Senior Contributor
Join Date: 01-07-06
Location: Somewhere over the rainbow
Country: 
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Buzzwords...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dreadnought
Presence: Both the BB's and the CV's have excellent presence.
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Colin Powell's assessment of USS New Jersey's *presence* off Beirut in 1983-84 :
Quote:
I was developing a strong distaste for the antiseptic phrases coined by State Department officials for foreign interventions which usually had bloody consequences for the military, words like "presence," "symbol," "signal," "option on the table," "establishment of credibility." Their use was fine if beneath them lay a solid mission. But too often these words were used to give the appearance of clarity to mud.
On August 29, before the airport truck bombing, two Marines had been killed by Muslim mortar fire; on September 3, two more, and on October 16, two more.
Against Weinberger's protest, McFarlane, now in Beirut, persuaded the President to have the battleship U.S.S. New Jersey start hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion.
What we tend lo overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would. When the shells started falling on the Shiites, they assumed the American "referee" had taken sides against them.
--- Colin Powell, "My American Journey", p. 280
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__________________
 "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9)
Last edited by Shipwreck : 11-13-2007 at 16:37 PM.
Reason: Typo corrected upon spell checker's notification
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