Welcome back to PodSave the World. This is a special bonus episode. Later this

week on the normal time I'm going to release an interview with Senator Mark Warner

who is the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. We're

going to talk about what the committee does, the Russia investigation, and a lot

of the issues around German unias you've been reading about in Trump's alleged

ties and connections with Russia. But in addition to that I wanted to talk

about what happened in Syria last week, not just Trump's military strikes but

the evolution of the crisis from 2001 till today. So I got on the phone earlier

with Colin Call who was a Middle East expert. He was vice president Biden's

national security advisor and it was a Middle East expert at the Pentagon and

we talked through you know how we got here today all the background all the

context. So I think you guys will appreciate it. It is a thoughtful mostly

nonpartisan look at a very very challenging situation in Syria. With me today is

Colin Call who from October of 2014 to January 2017 was deputy assistant to the

president and national security advisor to the vice president and from

February 2009 to December 2011 Colin was the deputy assistant secretary of

defense for the Middle East at the Pentagon. So there are very few people with

more experience in working the problem of Syria and the broader challenges in

the region than Colin. He is now a professor at Georgetown University's Edmund

A. Wall School of Foreign Service. So Colin thank you so much. Welcome to the

pod. It is great to have you. Great to be with you Tommy. Alright so let's talk

Syria. I think everyone is focused on president Trump's decision to launch

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