Word: harshness
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...branches of the service that "basic" has lost its edge--the rigors aren't all that rigorous, there's more silliness than saluting at shape-ups and there's altogether too much flirting between men and women. For most of this century, basic training was a deliberately harsh introduction to military life, a daily dose of screaming drill instructors dishing out vulgarity and physical intimidation to mortify--and motivate--trainees. These days drill sergeants spend more time mentoring than menacing. "We're no longer the charge-the-beach, stogie-in-the-mouth, cussing, hard-drinking, woman-chasing, World...
...shirts. Instead of running in formation, they run at their own pace, to challenge the speedy and avoid injuring the slower ones. On military obstacle courses they can run around, instead of over, some walls. In some quarters the very phrase "obstacle course" is frowned upon as too harsh. For the Navy, "confidence course" is now the preferred term...
There are limits to Mormon sociability. In 1993 the church capped a harsh campaign of intellectual purification against dozens of feminists and dissidents with the excommunication of D. Michael Quinn, a leading historian whose painstaking work documented Smith's involvement with the occult and church leaders' misrepresentation of some continued polygamy in the early 1900s. The current crackdown, some analysts believe, stems from fears of loss of control as the church becomes more international. Most think it will get worse if, as is likely, the church's hard-line No. 3 man, Boyd Packer, someday becomes President. Some wonder...
...Violent Youth Predator Act. Insisting that "predator" was dehumanizing hype, Democrats demanded a change. McCollum backed off and called it the Juvenile Crime Control Act. But this isn't just a fight over crime. It's also a fight over which party is tougher on crime. In that one, harsh words can be as tempting as harsh sentences...
...raid, both Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright personally contacted Pakistani President Farooq Ahmad Khan Leghari to gain his government's approval of the operation. Islamabad's decision to let the U.S. in was politically risky; in 1995 Pakistani government officials, then led by Benazir Bhutto, suffered harsh criticism from local extremists for allowing the U.S. to extradite World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef. Now, however, "they recognize that it's in their own interest to be supportive on terrorism issues like this," says a senior Administration official. "Undoubtedly they are hoping for some improvement in bilateral relations...