Truth be told, conventions are rarely moneymakers, despite the pledges of the city fathers; the need to stiff-arm other gatherings during weeks of preparations and extravagant policing costs tends to doom profits.
The tribes grew more polarized, and they began gathering arms to defend their economic interests.
Some have been returning to Iraq, gathering arms and setting up headquarters in towns in the south, where they have been trying to recruit supporters and organize demonstrations.
A small, fierce-eyed, plainspoken woman with graying hair stands in their midst, arms absent-mindedly gathering small children about her.
The many factions gaining strength in Syria's chaos — the Kurds gathering arms, the leaders of newly founded militias, the criminals, and the foreign jihadis — all have their own ends, and a unified nation may not be first among them.
What they found was a locked gate, a 3-year-old boy with unrelenting diarrhea being cradled in his father's arms and a gathering crowd of others waiting to get in.
A spokesman for the occupation authority said it had learned from Najaf residents that insurgents following Moktada al-Sadr, the fervently anti-American cleric, were gathering arms, apparently to defend themselves against 2,500 American soldiers who have encircled the city.
In the past, the Defense Clandestine Service, the Defense Intelligence Agency's covert human-intelligence gathering arm, has employed CIA-developed internet-based covert communications platforms, as has the United Kingdom's Secret Intelligence Service during joint operations conducted with the agency, said this person.
A Mesa police officer spotted a large group of heavily armed men in flak jackets gathering silently in a downtown park.
The identification of anthropology with military operations, intelligence gathering and "armed social work" augurs ill for the future of a discipline that studies populations distrustful of power — many of which have had unhappy past experiences with American invasion, occupation or support for corrupt dictatorships.
