General McClellan kept making excuses for his failure to act.

VOA: special.2009.09.17

Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa is "deeply disappointed" and says "failure is in the atmosphere" regarding Obama administration efforts to resolve the conflict.

VOA: standard.2009.11.02

In a secret assessment published by The Washington Post Monday, General Stanley McChrystal says he needs more forces and,without them, the effort faces possible failure.

VOA: standard.2009.09.22

Perhaps the decline of Reader's Digest's fortunes was inevitable with the longer-term social and political influences of 60s counterculture, the failure of general interest magazines, the rise of global media targeted at specific niches and the advent of the internet.

CNN: Rise and fall of Reader's Digest

Mr Reading believes the failure on public sector pay speaks to a general failure to focus on the right things in designing the deficit strategy.

BBC: Hard times for Mr Osborne

But the slogan could stand in, only a little unfairly, for the Democrats' general failure to get their communicative act together, right down to an inability to get their adverbs and subjects to agree.

NPR: 'Talking Right': Why the Left Is Losing, Linguistically