which would be the vienna negotiations that are under way. >> well, you're not really confident that that's going to convince the iranians or russians for that matter to abandon support for bashar al assad, do you? >> no. not at all. i would expect that they would continue to support assad, and the question then is, what kind of negotiations would, then, result from this multipartied event? probably, and hopefully, an end to the syrian war and a transition to a broad-based government without assad. that's not going to be easy, but i think that's possible. >> well, let's see if they can do that. if they do that, nobel peace prizes out there for key players involved. i'm not holding my breath, though, suspecting that that's going to take a long, long time. let's get into this linguistic battle underway right now. the white house says these forces now about to be deployed into northern syria do not have a combat mission.