Word: commandant
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...needs to get a new tank into service. "The good old U.S. Army," says McChrystal, "is going to put out that IFV with every bit of innovation they can, and it'll be a monster." General Volney Warner, who retired last summer from the Army's readiness command, admits this is a problem: "There is always something coming along tomorrow that we ought to hang on a weapon. So we lose control over the development...
Hunched down in concrete foxholes, the officers and NCOs fingered the triggers of their M-16s as instructors stood behind, monitoring the shooting exercise. Then came the command to fire: "Comienzen fuego...
Another difference between now and then: the Viet Cong had spent decades building up their cadres, fighting skills, command structure and supply lines; they also had North Viet Nam, with its huge regular army, first backing them up, then leading them in their conquest. The Salvadoran insurgency, by contrast, is limited to about 6,000 active fighters, many of whom are recent converts to the cause. The closest analogue to a North Viet Nam in Central America is Nicaragua, which is not really very close at all. The Sandinista regime there is still young and insecure. True, it is gravitating...
...Boot takes another plunge into the black pool of memory and finds-surprise!-flinty nobility. Actually, no surprise for anyone who feasted on the submarine movies of the 1950s. Here is the dogged captain (Jürgen Prochnow), navigating g the straits of political bureaucracy ""and a bungling high command. Here is the wild-eyed wraith of the engine room (Erwin Leder), who "cracks" during one crisis, then performs heroically in the next. Here are the hide-and-seek battles, the claustrophobic tensions, the respect for a valiant enemy. As with David, the novelty here is getting the inside German...
...argument goes like this: every movie is propaganda. Every character is a walking placard-for capitalism or idealism or monogamy or the status quo. Every shot, by its placement and rhythm and duration, is one more Pavlovian command to the viewer. A narrative movie is usually successful to the extent that it obscures these facts, transforms the thesis into entertainment and the placards into persuasive semblances of human beings...