11.   For environmentalists, the week before Christmas produced one piece of good news and one tactical retreat.

12.   Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, beat a tactical retreat after his proposal that NATO renounce the first use of nuclear weapons was dismissed as unrealistic.

13.   No less surprising was the caliber of those supporting the tactical retreat in the battle for affirmative action.

14.   On Monday, in a tactical retreat, the government allowed students to enter the Parliament building to talk with government representatives.

15.   Stung by the criticism, the White House insisted that Washington was simply beating a tactical retreat in the face of Western European objections.

16.   Survival instinct should force upon this league a tactical retreat to Canada and a few select hockey hotbeds in the northern U.S.

17.   The Clinton administration is in a tactical retreat, having dropped mining and grazing reforms and proposed to ease the impact of the Endangered Species Act.

18.   The Justice Department presented the move as a pragmatic response to the appeals court decision, a prudent tactical retreat.

19.   A tactical retreat buys him time.

20.   His war room is a dimly lit warehouse where sneak attacks and tactical retreats are conceived on a shabby couch surrounded by posters of guns and women.