mr. morell: i'll start. i think that vladimir puent's main objective, there's a lot of different objectives in what he did, but his main objective when prop up assad, who putin moved, made his move, was really -- assad was at his weakest point since the fall of 2012. putin believes that he needs to prop up assad because putin's concerned that if assad goes, there will be chaos in syria and there will be more running room for isis. and like robert, i don't necessarily believe that. it depends on what comes next. what we need is, we need a transition from assad to a government that all syrians can agree with. that's the transition we need. if that happens, then putin's wrong, then assad going is not a bad thing, assad going is a good thing. what putin has done is now made that potential transition much more difficult. because assad was on the verge, right, of falling essentially. and allowing us to get to that new government. and now russia has made that so much more difficult. what he's done is also now made

mr. morell, i wanted to ask you a question also. you had made mention a little bit earlier, you talked about the crusades and the fact that christianity has come to a point now to where it's not -- you know, that we moved beyond that in christianity, and that islam needs to be able to get to that point at some time. i wanted to ask you, more so than the teachings of islam, and there's been a lot out there about whether or not there's a certain percentage of muslims around the world that subscribe to more of a violent form of medina muslim or islam versus the mecca that is more commonly known. but don't you think that really the problems that we're seeing in the middle east and the radicalization really stems from a shift that happened in the 1970s with the ayatollah and other religious leaders in that part of the world basically trying to, you know, put more of a radical form of islam throughout their countries? >> so congressman, i think that extremism has been a problem within their religion for a very, very long time, since its b