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on the issue of syria has been remarkable. as i said in my opening statement, we're backing the arab league's own transition plan. syria sees itself as a major country in the arab league. the syrians call themselves the beating heart of the arab world. and suddenly the arab league has essentially suspended syria's membership in the arab league. this is not a north african country like libya that's a little out of the arab mainstream. it's significant what the arabs are doing. now, why is this happening? i think in part this is happening because of the arab spring. if you look at opin...

uprising, where it came from. where it might be going. and how the regime is responding. we'll speak in the order that you see. my colleagues and friends down the table. our first speaker will be bassam haddad, direct ever of middle east studies program at george washington university. the founder of the arab studies journal. and most recently the co-founder of the excellent online journal, jeddilia.com. he's written a number of important contributions on syria. including the new book, "business networks: the political commentary of brilliance." and published an interesting essay cal...

go back to the $600 toilet seat it is too serious an issue, that there are places that can be cut carefully, with discretion and maintain our strength. certainly with regard to the foreign-aid budget, we are providing very careful oversight because we know how important it is to spend our dollars wisely. i would like to mention another area which i think is absolutely essential when you talk about american power in the world. senator chambliss talked about the economy. what we do with our infrastructure, what we do with our educational system, how we train our people for the future. ...

really we have populations, the allawi minority, some of the population are being used as buffers against the other parts of the population engaging in the protest. this also doesn't mean there are no allawis part of the uprising. many of the intellectuals and the activists and the people engaged in what is known as the local coordinating committees, many of them are allawis, many are jews and so on. we do see the minorities, whether they're allawis or whatever, kind of fearful for what can happen. but that's partly because the regime for a long time has presented itself as the guard...

churkin. >> if i understand our sort of mode of thinking correctly, you cannot expect or you can actual count on it if you're our ally that we're not going to turn around overnight and say, wl, you know, we've had good relations with you over the years but now thanks, no thanks, deal with your problems, we're not going to do anything about it. but it's not... again, it's very important to understand it's not our effort to support anybody specifically staying in power. >> rose: we conclude with a look back at the super bowl with espn's adam schefter. >> i think it was not a great game...