Any country cannot attain financial success and military strength without passable sources of energy.
No one would claim either approaches the success of their predecessors, or even passable hit status.
Anglicised covers of his records, including Amen Corner's passable (If Paradise Is) Half As Nice, would occasionally find success in Europe but Battisti's fame remained an overwhelmingly domestic phenomenon.
But times have changed, and the combined success of Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy and Zack Snyder's passable Man of Steel have pushed the pair back to the top of the superhero tree.
If we're measuring good on the basis of commercial success, then Jared Leto's Thirty Seconds to Mars are certainly passable in this category.
During the music-video era, a pretty face has been essential to success, and good dance moves haven't hurt; plenty of merely passable singers got by on studio productions and video clips.
With a combination of disarming folksiness and passable — though admittedly inexpert — photography skills, Mr. Stanton has achieved one of the most unlikely success stories in a city filled with them.
Madonna bluffed her way through one film success (Desperately Seeking Susan [1985], in fact carried by Rosanna Arquette), and was a passable, Monroe-styled, femme fatale in her then-lover Warren Beatty's Dick Tracy (1990).
Sections of Highway 1 were barely passable a decade ago, and Western officials have often cited the rebuilding of the road as a relative success.
These statistics may point to the possibility of a troop drawdown strategy for the United States — but while a strategically passable outcome still seems within reach, it is increasingly hard to believe that there are the makings of a major success for American foreign policy in Iraq.
4. WRAP-UP/HOMEWORK: Individually, students use ideas in the Times article, from class discussion, and from their research to write response papers reflecting on the final statement in the article: "[W]hile a strategically passable outcome still seems within reach, it is increasingly hard to believe that there are the makings of a major success for American foreign policy in Iraq".
