But by taking over the Spanish empire, America had become the kind of imperial power it had once denounced.
Blancpain had pretty much stopped making watches in the 1970s--it had once supplied diving watches to the U.S. Navy--and hadn't been much of a factor in the industry for a long time before that.
Once it was on the ground, the moon was a pockmarked, sandy boulder, so dull and opaque that it was incredible to think that it had once illuminated the sky with its shining reflection.
Compaq had not done anything illegal, but it had relaxed its once-higher standards.
Most recently Helmsley got into a dispute with a cemetery, of all places, when she decided that her departed husband's resting place in the Bronx had lost the pleasant vista it once had because of construction.
But this does not seem to have had the impact it would once have had in boosting its growth.
As a result, JI lost any shred of popular support it had once enjoyed.
There is enough left to see that it had once been a good-looking face.
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It had once been a Dow component, too, though that ended back in 1999.
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In June 2007, the accounting firm withdrew its support for the audits it had once conducted with such pride.
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But even if it had once been the case, it's increasingly hard to make any form of that argument now.
The tired feet of those who walked the dusty roads of Montgomery helped a nation see that to which it had once been blind.
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Whether true or not, they were an embarrassment to the government, and when their leader was executed last year, Yemen said it had dealt once and for all with Islamist violence.
Financial troubles, along with industry shifts, led GM to divest virtually all of the component subsidiaries it had once relied on to manufacture innovations hatched by its in-house army of scientists.
In the cramped flat, under framed photos of the grandparents decked in Soviet war medals, we threw back vodka and sweet champagne and jabbed at some unnaturally pink salami that looked suspiciously as if it had once oinked.
Together with Theodore (Ted) Levitt, Kotler was responsible for lifting marketing out of the disrepute in which it had once been held, changing it from being the slicker part of sales to being a recognised strategic function in its own right.
It had once dominated retail with its catalogs, then became a powerhouse in free standing retail stores, then led the movement to shopping malls as an anchor chain, and even used its history in lending to develop what became Discover card, and had once shown its ability to be a financial services company and even an insurer!
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He claimed Arben Lleshi told him that he had killed Hoxha, saying it had been an accident and that he had hit him just once because Hoxha had threatened him over a drugs debt.
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Mr Mugabe gets to nominate an extra 30 (unelected) parliamentarians for his ruling party, so ZANU had enough to run the show once it had sailed past 45 elected seats.
In the past few years, it lost the death-grip it once had on the stock market.
All the different angles and ways they had come at the decision together did not ever include it the word for had he once said it, avowed that he did love her, loved Sheri Fisher, then it all would have been transformed.
It added it would comment further once it had fully evaluated the proposals.
He told a recent group of visitors that the fuel-tax escalator might have run its course, pointing out that the all-party consensus which had once sustained it had now collapsed.
Built into it was a stipulation that it would become legally binding only once it had been ratified by 55 separate countries, but also by enough Annex 1 countries to collectively account for 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
The company said it would most likely appeal the decision once it had received the full grounds for refusal.
But it was Germany that insisted on the pact's tough rules in the first place: it had feared that, once the single currency was adopted, irresponsible financial behaviour by one euro member country would cause suffering to all the others by raising their cost of borrowing.
The team had bled money in most seasons and had made it to the Super Bowl only once in 34 years.
But a decade later the rule seems to have lost whatever effectiveness it once had.
But none comes close to matching the refuge that it once had in Afghanistan.
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