I couldn't shake off the sense that it was somehow linked to the horrors they'd just endured; that it was a lingering echo of the instinctive, terror-driven restraint - a numbed obedience borne out of the purest desperation - that had allowed four gunmen to spend hours sifting, separating, taunting and butchering a huge crowd of young men and women.
I imagine someone like that, fighting the vestiges of the fear that they could be arrested or deported, even as citizens -- because those threats still invariably affect their extended families, their friends, their communities -- pushing through that instinctive terror to register.
But the war on terror, the war in Iraq, and the instinctive anti-Americanism of the Mexican political elite had already pushed them apart; and Mr Aguilar Zinser, with his owlish mien and dandy's ties and defiantly outspoken remarks, had only made things worse.Related items Latin America and the United States: Between rivalry and co-operationNov 27th 2003He was not a gringo-basher by nature.
Now the Revolution's leaders were preempting this punitive will in order to control it: they conceived of terror as rational rather than emotional and as organized rather than instinctive.
With his turban and camouflage jacket, his ornate Arabic and harsh vows of continued terror against America, Osama bin Laden revealed in his speech the instinctive cunning that has made him such a formidable foe.
Steven Aftergood, the director of the Federation of American Scientists Projectt on Government Secrecy, said the appeals court ruling reflected the tensions between what he portrayed as the executive branch's instinctive secrecy about national security and the need for open debate if the war on terror is to be permanent.
It is impossible, especially for those of us who have lost loved ones to terror, to see the knifings and hear talk of martyrs and not respond with instinctive revulsion.
From the bland terror of a tax form to the labyrinthian intricacies of customs papers, bureaucratic paperwork can elicit instinctive reactions.
It was as if, in an instinctive response to the overwhelming power of the new weapons, the fighting became more prolonged but less intense there being only so much terror that men could stand.
