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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.

At some point, there is going to be a terrorist diaspora out of Syria like we've never seen before.

I know something quite sure. We'll never have peace with this Syrian regime. They'll never give us relief, and we'll never forget that.

There is no one leader that's going to unify all of Syria that suddenly everyone is going to go, 'Yes, that's a logical place.' They're not unified. They don't have a setup succession like we do in the United States.

There is little doubt that an unstable Syria will destabilize the whole Middle East.

I want to arrive at the possibility of peace with the Syrians, and when I believe that the conditions are right, I will not miss the opportunity.

We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.

Syria is the proud heir of an ancient civilization that has a unique spectrum of minorities that encompasses Muslims and Christians of various denominations. There are at least ten such ethnic and religious groups.