to say that with russian/iran, assad has won the civil war in syria? i don t think that is too strong of a statement. i think they have provided him the werewithal to be ascendant at this point. dana: that s big news. our stated policy was that he had to go. now one of our generals is testifying in congress saying he s in a position to declare that he has won the civil war in syria. it s been an unstated policy to say essentially assad can rule this rough state that he now controls. but we have seeded territory to iran, russia, turkey. it is a great power contest. we have deployments there to try to detract from action against our allies on the ground. we will be there for the foreseeable future. seems like a grim assessment considering that mr. assad will be in place and whatever portion of this country he controls. but, there s a partition of this