Daily News Channel
From the battlefields along the Demilitarized Zone to the fearful capital of Saigon and southward, the allies last week were nearly everywhere on the military and political defensive, waiting uncertainly for the Communists' next blow and by no means confident that it could be wholly blunted. A full 25 days after the Communists first launched their general offensive, South Viet Nam was still a country taut with terror and riven by fire.
Sometimes history is made by the force of arms on battlefields, sometimes by the fall of an exhausted empire. But often when historians set about figuring why a nation took one course rather than another, they are most interested in who said what to whom at a meeting far from the public eye whose true significance may have been missed even by those who took part in it
Almost 10 years ago, Osama bin Laden ghosted away from the Afghan battlefields. Since then, it is as if the doomsday sheikh had slipped into a twilight zone where the only proof that he was alive was the chilling voice on a spool of tape, the occasional video image — and a string of terrorist outrages and wars lengthening around the globe that claim inspiration from him and his cause.
Pilots winging over raging Libyan battlefields in Mirage and F-16 fighter jets. A convoy of troops and tanks rumbling to the aid of an embattled partner