Excerpt
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Our chief foreign affairs correspondent, Margaret Warner sat down with Ford today, on the first day he has agreed to be interviewed on television since his departure, to discuss the election and what he sees as the failures of U.S. policy.
MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour): Ambassador Ford, thank you for joining us.
ROBERT FORD, Former U.S. Ambassador to Syria: It’s my pleasure to be here.
MARGARET WARNER: So, President Assad seems to be coasting to another victory in an election. What’s going to be the impact of that, both on the political situation and the battlefield situation?
ROBERT FORD: I don’t think it will have much impact on the battlefield. I have no indication that the opposition and the armed opposition groups are going to stop fighting, so I think the election will have no result on that.
Politically, it will cheer Assad’s supporters. I have seen pictures today of celebrations in Syria. But it really is simply a signal. The election is a signal to us to, to other countries in the region, to Europe, et cetera, that Assad is not leaving, he is staying, deeply entrenched in the capital in Syria, even as other parts of the country remain outside his control.
MARGARET WARNER: And so is it time for us to recognize that, in fact, he’s going to be there a long time, that the whole strategy both of the opposition and the Western- and Gulf- and neighbor-backed efforts has not worked?
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