to us tonight, unlike a lot of people have lots who have lots of opinions about syria david cutugno bashar al-assad which is a pretty unique expected for an academic in particular and david wrote a book in 2005 which held up great hope for the future of syria under bush are. if you recall there is some sense that bashar would a reformer of syria after his father died and we have now discovered that is not the case and he is now written another book called the fall of the house of assad. we are going to talk a bit about that tonight and my first question is going to be, when did you first meet assad and what was your impression of him? >> i first met him in 2004. i wanted to interview him because he was the atypical middle east dictator. he was a licensed ophthalmologist. he was not groomed to be president and only was brought back into the grooming process apparatus when his older brother who was to succeed his father died in a car accident. bashar within london getting the equivalent of an advanced degree in ophthalmology and he was brought back and raise the state apparatus until he became presid