Word: pretexts
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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...While these preferences have an adverse affect on Asian Americans, we determined that they were longstanding and legitimate, and not a pretext of discrimination," said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Michael Williams in a prepared statement...
...doubt that Stalin was behind the plot. Kirov had turned the Leningrad party organization into a good, active group. He was very popular, so a blow aimed at him would hurt the party and the people. That's probably why he was marked for sacrifice: his death provided a pretext for shaking up the country, alarming the people so that they would accept the terror and let Stalin get rid of the undesirables and "enemies of the people...
Bush insisted he would not use Iraq's violation of diplomatic norms in Kuwait last week as a pretext to launch a military attack. That is not a real option yet; the U.S. commander in the gulf, General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, says shipments are behind schedule, and it will be a month before all the heavy armor en route is actually delivered. While its power builds, Washington intends to pursue the diplomatic and economic tracks until they have either visibly begun to strangle Saddam or been proved a failure. Meanwhile, Washington is debating some unsettled questions...
...fine-tune the run-up to hostilities. The question now being debated concerns provocation: What Iraqi action could credibly justify a fight? Is the invasion of Kuwait in itself adequate? Some in the Administration argue that it is, but "the longer war is delayed, the more contrived such a pretext would appear," says an American intelligence-community planner. "We've been bedeviled by the pretext thing for weeks, but we were greatly heartened by the Iraqi raid of foreign embassies" in Kuwait last Friday. "That kind of stupidity shows that Saddam is capable of providing a provocation at any time...
That strategy has its own potential dangers. The biggest threat is that Saddam would order his extensive network of agents in Jordan's predominantly Palestinian population to rebel against the King. Under the pretext of restoring order, Saddam could then move troops into Jordan. That would trigger intervention by Israel. Saddam would have accomplished his goal of transforming the confrontation between Iraq and most of the world into a showdown with Israel and the U.S. that would unite Arabs behind...