He told me that his father, Richard, a lieutenant colonel in military intelligence, made Pat Conroy's harsh Army-officer father in his novel "The Great Santini" "look like a punk".
The previous prime minister, who was also installed after a military coup, had proved to be too harsh even for army tastes.
This lush coastal nation of 10 million, rich in minerals and tropical fruits, and dark at night from lack of electricity, has known harsh dictators and army shooting sprees in its 51 years of independence.
Instead of seeing crazed German fanatics who communicated their pathogen to hardened Jew-haters, he asked us to see what happened in the forties as a blind scything through a harsh landscape, ignorant armies clashing by night and killing millions in the darkness, a scene from Bosch more than from Kafka.
It is also pressing the opposition in Syria to avoid harsh retaliation against the army, the police and the municipal agencies of Mr. Assad's government that could cause a security vacuum and a collapse of services.
They've been involved in a firefight in Iraq, in which they not only tore apart a group of insurgents – "beebs" or "hajjis" in the army's harsh dialect – but were filmed doing so by an embedded journalist.
Mr Hegg has closed his clinic and moved his family away for fear of attack: "The strategy now—supported by people outside our province is to get rid of us, not just from power, but altogether".We still believe in democracy," he says, seeing the army's harsh actions in Cairo as setting the foundation for a "fascist state".
The Japanese army imposed harsh measures against the local population, with troops, especially the Kempeitai or Japanese military police, particularly ruthless in dealing with the Chinese population.
A major offensive against Moscow was renewed; after two months of fierce battles in increasingly harsh weather the German army almost reached the outer suburbs of Moscow, where the exhausted troops were forced to suspend their offensive.
People "disappear" into unknown prisons; bullet-riddled bodies are dumped at the roadside.The latest attacks prompted some unusually harsh public criticism of the army in the National Assembly.
