Newsweek: Your Time Is Up

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As Newsweek’s point man on the Pentagon “pool,” I was on standby for any military action.  I got the call to muster at Andrews Air Force base to join troops bound for Haiti in 1994.  Eventually, I flew to Gonaives with Army Special Forces troops, whose muddled goal was to work side-by-side with the remnants of Duvalier’s brutal military attachés.  Greeted by throngs of cheering crowds as we landed in the town’s soccer field, I felt like Ernie Pyle with the Allied troops liberating Paris.  I never felt such a sense of pride in the U.S. military as I did that day.  Still, as one officer put it to me, the mission was so confusing it was like being “Through the Looking Glass.”