Word: vernon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Assad as a move to bolster the Arab coalition against Iraq. But government sources have disclosed that the U.S. forged an opening to Syria more than nine months before the invasion of Kuwait. The quiet initiative began with a letter from President Bush delivered to Assad by special envoy Vernon Walters in 1989. The Administration then reached an understanding with the Syrians that Damascus would not obstruct U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Israeli officials and Palestinians. In return, Walters pledged that Washington would tolerate Assad's strengthening of his influence over Lebanon and would urge the Israelis to acquiesce...
...shudders. A plume of smoke and debris shoots up 400 feet at a site about one and a half miles west by southwest of the hotel. "Boom," another explosion, from the north. "Holy shit, holy shit," screams the photographers as autowinder race furiously. "I've got three confirmed hits," Vernon says over the phone to the Inquirer in Philadelphia. As a chopper hovers over the site, Army radio announces that the attack was conventional. I pull of my mask and discover that I had been sweating like a marathoner. I have just witnessed a missile attack on Tel Aviv...
Just as the all-clear sounded, Vernon grabs me and we race downstairs to our car. "We're gonna be the first ones at that missle site," he proclaims. We jump into the little green rented Mitsubishi with the words "Foreign press" written on the doors in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. We race in the direction that we had seen the first missle land, falling in behind a fleet of ambulances and army jeeps that led us right to the spot where the SCUD had landed...
...talk to some people," says Vernon. We move back out to the street. A little boy wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle T-shirt taps me on the leg. He asks me if I am a reporter. "I guess," I tell him. "Tov, zeh heleck may ha-til [This is part of the missile]," he says, as he produces a contorted burned SCUD remain, "Birtzinut? [Is it really]", I ask, "Betach! [of course]" he responds, very matter of factly...
...that I'd help him up. He begins to explain to me what the explosion had felt like in his home, which was about 50 yards from ground zero. His ears are still ringing, he says, and I have to shout so he can hear me. Vernon writes furiously. "Yihiye beseder [it will be fine]," I try to reassure the Cohens. Then the medics come in and take them away...