Pentagon ‘three-day blitz’ plan for Iran

THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.

Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.

Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.

President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”. The Sunday Times

09.02.07 -- Cock-a-Doodle-Doo! -- the Acrostic

Sunday, September 2, 2007

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ACROSTIC

Puzzle by Emily Cox & Henry Rathvon, edited by Will Shortz

It has always seemed to me that if one could get at least four or five of the defined words of an acrostic, that there was a chance for a solution, however laborious. Today, on a first time read-through of the defined words, I got one -- that’s right, one!

However, this tough fossilized egg of a puzzle finally hatched. The quotation is from The Egg and I by Betty MacDonald, first published in 1945, a memoir about her adventures and travails as a young wife on a chicken farm in Washington state. It was a blockbuster success as a novel, was adapted into a movie, starring Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, and was the inspiration for a series of ten Ma and Pa Kettle movies starring Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride.

If it weren’t for my personal experiences (as a boy, living on farms, raising chickens, seeing the films mentioned, etc.), and having walked by Teddy Roosevelt’s birthplace in New York -- the only defined word I knew at first -- I would have thrown up my arms and flown the coop. I hope it was as tough for everyone as it was for me. It’s a personal matter between the ego and I.

The defined words:

A. Heated enclosure for raising fowl;
B. Bookplate (2 wds.);
C. Concoct, devise, invent (2 wds.);
D. Charge for brain enhancement;
E. Yellow wrapper (2 wds.);
F. Grasp-inhibiting wear;
G. White that’s clear naturally;
H. Breed of hen from an English county;
I. With Word J., a hammy breakfast;
J. See I;
K. The Creek, e.g., to the Southeastern U.S.;
L. Involved with the science of sound;
M. Productive layer from Italy;
N. Extra baggage, unneeded verbiage, discarded cards in poker;
O. Cloth for drying dishes, cutlery, etc. (2 wds.);
P. Came out of one’s shell;
Q. Spicy tortilla dish filled with meat;
R. Shaped ovately;
S. Spreading dirt around?;
T. Complained in a fowl way?;
U. Sense of natural kinship;
V. City where Teddy Roosevelt was born (2 wds.);
W. Abate, as noise (2 wds.);
X. Sit on in the way some mothers would.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

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The New York Times Crossword Puzzle solution above is by the author of this blog and does not guarantee accuracy. If you find errors or omissions, you are more than welcome to make note of same in the Comments section of this post -- any corrections found necessary will be executed promptly upon verification.

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