That policy is now in tatters.

But Chen s legacy was already in tatters.

The old European social model is in tatters.

But today the Hejaz Railway lies in tatters, ruins.

The European strategy is in tatters and not only on the transatlantic front.

But it was soon in tatters, and the world moved to generalized floating.

Now its economic project lies in tatters while the leadership needed to rekindle political integration is nowhere to be seen.

Meanwhile, America s strategic partnership with Pakistan, where Obama won a significant symbolic victory by eliminating Osama bin Laden, is in tatters.

Today, a democratic transition that the West sought to portray as a model that other Arab nations could emulate lies in tatters.

His little brother had a disembowelled chest, and you could distinctly count his white ribs through the tatters of his torn flesh.

Our political and legal institutions were in tatters, and an entire nation was traumatized, brutalized and reduced to being an extension of a single man.

Its credibility after the disastrous invasion of Iraq is at an all time low, notwithstanding the global sympathy for President Barack Obama, and its economic model is in tatters.

Moreover, Putin s associates wanted Yukos wealth, which was confiscated by the state oil company Rosneft through lawless taxation, leaving Putin s tax reform and judicial reform in tatters and severely undermining property rights.

Why not just drop that decisive bomb of theirs and put an end to the inhuman agony of thousands of bodies, lying in tatters in the overcrowded hospital wards that I visit?

Without the American climate change package, the promises made by the US administration only seven months ago at the Copenhagen summit have become worthless. The European strategy is in tatters and not only on the transatlantic front.

Turkey has also lost several regional allies, particularly some of the Gulf monarchies, which are angry at the Erdoğan government s unconditional support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Turkey s much vaunted soft power diplomacy and neighborhood policy now lie in tatters.

Before the crisis, Europe looked like the most likely candidate to make a successful transition to the first equilibrium greater political unification. Now its economic project lies in tatters while the leadership needed to rekindle political integration is nowhere to be seen.

The hopes for a peaceful, prosperous and democratic future that burgeoned during the months of relative peace that followed the signing of the Peace Accords almost exactly two years ago and the successful holding of elections in September 1992 now lie in tatters.

Poor Lazarus there, chattering his teeth against the curbstone for his pillow, and shaking off his tatters with his shiverings, he might plug up both ears with rags, and put a corn cob into his mouth, and yet that would not keep out the tempestuous Euroclydon.