He himself was never a soldier, but he used a formidable array of Tikritis who were, and Ba'athists to boot.
Nor was there sufficient challenge to the way the rightwing press increasingly and flagrantly used its formidable and biased campaigning power.
Ted Cruz, the maverick Texas senator, used his formidable ground game to beat the bombastic property tycoon Donald Trump into second place in the Republican race.
A professional with the utmost integrity and honesty, Mike used his formidable planning, architecture and urban design skills to help shape the city he loved so dearly.
"It is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak," the Senator said.
A brilliant, sometimes abrasive infighter, he used a formidable arsenal of facts, bluffs, whispers, implied threats and, when necessary, pyrotechnic fits of anger to press his positions.
They have also used their formidable presence in Israel's combat units and supporters in Mr Netanyahu's ruling coalition to press home their advantage.
Having left their Central Asian homeland to engage in the luxury trade along the Silk Road, this Iranian-speaking community used their formidable business skills to establish a vast trading network ranging from Korean kingdoms to the Byzantine Empire.
Roberts's record showed that he consistently "used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak," and so, Obama argued, Roberts didn't have the right values or instincts for the job.
If you're used to formidable protagonists who swagger confidently past a series of bad guys and calamities, then Gabrielle Fox, the novel's heroine, will come as a refreshing change.
