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One of the thorniest foreign-policy issues facing the winner of the election will be how to hasten the end of the brutal Syrian civil war that threatens much of the Middle East. I've just spent two days at a fascinating conference in Istanbul attended by more than 80 rebel commanders and civilian activists who traveled here from inside Syria. The conference was called "Managing the Transition in Syria" and was sponsored by the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies, a Washington-based think tank headed by Syrian intellectual and activist Radwan Ziadeh.