host: now on your screen is representative eliot engel, a democrat of new york and long time member of the house foreign affairs committee. congressman engel, before we went to break we showed this headline from "usa today," bombing may signal belt meltdown in syria. and a similar one in the financial times this morning, actually their lead editorial, beginning of the end for assad. what's your assessment from your perch on the foreign affairs committee? guest: first of all i hope it's the beginning of the end for assad. he is a brutal dictator. his father before him was just as brutal. the assad family's ruled for 40 years. they run a police state. cause all kinds of opposition on a very, very brutal. and i think the syrian people deserve better. this may very well be the tipping point in this battle. we have seen these battles before, there are countries, it's always at a point which it seems to tip. and the very bold insurgent bomb in damascus yesterday, which killed the defense minister, the former defense minister who is assad's brother-in-law, and high ranking security officials,

eliot engel is our guest. caller: good morning. my concern, mr. l -- by the way, it is a beautiful country over there, and we need to protect that. to get overying the terrorist action on 9/11. one thing to keep in mind with the country of iran, how many of the foreign countries around there have relations to this man that is kind of like another saddam hussein, so to speak, except iraq is in iraq and iran is iran. but my biggest concern is, are there any efforts being done to infiltrate some secret service, are top men in their, trying to weed out those responsible for the mass murdering going on, so to speak. host: congressman engel? guest: i am not quite sure what the caller was saying. host: do we have assets in syria? guest: i think there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes that have the united states working with our allies in the region. we are working to try to effectuate the right change in the middle east, which right now of course syria is front and center. host: is our embassy completely closed over there? guest: i think we d

in about 45 minutes, we'll talk to congressman eliot engel about u.