Despite strong criticism from the United States, Russia has maintained that the systems could be used only to protect Iran's air space.Did you read that? Read it again. What does this sentence actually say?
When I get on people's cases about wisely choosing how to say things, so often I get, "You know what I meant." Do I? How can you be sure? That line may just be a mistranslation or some semantic sloppiness, but it leapt from the page for me. Compare these two lines.
The systems could be used only to protect.
The systems could only be used to protect.
Exact same words in each of those.
Rant time! This is why I hated the timed reading tests in grade school. I knew it even back then. Speed reading requires you to view a sentence as a whole and not take the time to see the pieces that make it what it is. You gloss over things. You let your brain assemble what it thinks it just saw. Speed reading has no place in legitimate study. Why would a public school want me to speed read? Why would they want me to train my brain to assemble things as I thought they were rather than seeing what was actually there? If you don't see the fnords they can't hurt you.
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