Word: ragtag
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...while enthusiasts of such Reagan-era proxy warriors as the Nicaraguan contras and the Afghan mujahedeen insist that the way forward in Iraq is to increase pressure and to arm the ragtag collection of opposition organizations gathered under the banner of the Iraqi National Congress, U.S. allies in the region believe such a policy would be at best ineffective, and at worst a recipe for the sort of chaos that has literally reduced Afghanistan to rubble over the past decade. Regional stakeholders such as Saudi Arabia might be more inclined to sign off on a direct U.S. invasion to depose...
...then the Internet, libertarian-leaning computer hackers realized how easily the government could eavesdrop on their data and how important it was to get cryptography away from the Man and into the hands of the People. Diffie's breakthrough did just that. Throughout the '80s and '90s a ragtag group of like-minded crypto fiends built on his work and distributed it over the Internet, end-running the agency and ensuring that everyday citizens could keep their e-mail to themselves...
With Tommy Lasorda at the helm, a ragtag group of minor leaguers and washed up major leaguers defeat the professionals from Cuba and win a shocker that some compare to the "Miracle on Ice" from...
...African leaders, whose continent has recently seen the most dramatic failures of the blue-helmeted peacekeepers. They pointed to Rwanda, where the U.N. failed to act to stop the 1994 genocide, and to recent savagery in Sierra Leone, where some 500 hapless peacekeeping troops were taken hostage by a ragtag militia. Everyone from U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan to the major Western powers already agree on the need to dramatically overhaul the system. The question is whether they're willing or able to invest the political and material resources that would make it possible, and also how they'll revise...
...Protests, In Sum Quoth the Times: "Devotees of lively political protest, a fading art in recent decades, had something to cheer for and against today as an eclectic, ragtag assortment of causes snaked and howled through the heart of this city, giving pause to Republican conventioneers intent on decorum...