which appears to hope that syria s president assad will negotiate his own departure, seems utterly doomed. instead, america, the western world, indeed, the civilized world should attempt to dislodge the assad regime. but is there a smart way to do it? for a number of reasons military intervention is unlikely to work well in syria. unlike in, say, libya, syria is not a vast country with huge stretches of land where rebels can retreat, hide, and be resupplied. syria is roughly one-tenth the size of libya, but with three times as many people. perhaps for this reason the syrian rebels have not been able to take control of any significant part of that country. the geopolitics of military intervention are also unattractive. in egypt and even in libya all major regional powers, world powers were on the side of dislodging the regime or at least passively accepting that it would happen. in syria that s not the case. iran and russia have both maintained strong ties to the assad regime,
your first impression from what we learned from the eight republican candidates? i think there were a couple of really explosive parts of the debate for me. the first one was obviously iran. i thought that perry and gingrich led the way with strategy when it comes to iran. but the thing that sort of blew up in newt gingrich s face, i think, the discussion on immigration. he had a rick perry heartless moment with this. i think this is really going to impact him tomorrow. it s really going to impact him with grassroots conservatives. i can see both sides of the argument here. he was reaganesque, 84- 86, reagan signed a huge amnesty bill but i don t think he made that differential during the debate. this is one of the most substantive debates, we really were able to see a lot of different sides on the candidates on this side of the issue. ron paul did surprisingly well on a couple of different parts. perry talked more than normal. it was good. i think gingrich gingrich prob