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Assad is the president of Syria. He enjoys fairly effective control over his country.

Our only goal is to strengthen the opposition and to avoid the dilemma whereby we only have the choice between Bashar Assad and al-Qaeda.

I think the real target of al-Qaeda is Saudi Arabia by the way. They hate us and we're a vehicle to get at Saudi Arabia. I think Osama bin Laden really wants to topple that regime and have his people move in, but that's a whole other story.

Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei and Assad are two sides of the same terror coin. Letting Assad continue to wield lethal power means that Tehran's terror network - from Hezbollah to the Houthis - will persist in threatening the West.

The fall of the Syrian regime is in the interest of America and Israel.

The Syrian regime is helping the insurgency in Iraq and allowing all kinds of militants to come in and out, and go to Iraq to attack random soldiers and innocent people.

Damascus is the center of world terror. All these organizations, Jihad and Hamas, their headquarters are in Damascus. Syria supports Hezbollah.

I think Syria is in a particularly sensitive geopolitical position in terms of the politics of the Middle East.

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad belongs to the small Alawite sect and is therefore considered a heretic by many Sunnis; al-Assad runs a secular regime, and therefore he is considered by Sunni militants to be an apostate, and he is inflicting a total war on his Sunni population.

Unless there is meaningful change in Syria and an end to the crackdown, President Assad and those around him will find themselves isolated internationally and discredited within Syria.