Attacks by army defectors are transforming the Syrian uprising into an armed insurgency that threatens to spiral into civil war. The Free Syrian Army holds no territory, appears largely disorganized and is up against a fiercely loyal and cohesive military that will stop at nothing to protect the regime.
Interesting and slightly contradictory... the military is "fiercely loyal and cohesive", yet there are enough defectors to transform the uprising into an armed insurgency.

I wrote somewhere upthread that with foreign intervention out of the picture the only real game-changer I can see is the possibility of large scale defection or refusal to follow orders among the military.

If anyone here has direct experience with the Syrian military, a question: how strong is this loyalty and cohesion, really? Is the loyalty to the government absolute, or is it tempered by loyalty to other members of the same service, with a possibility that units may refuse to engage defectors? To what extent is loyalty to the regime tempered with self interest... meaning is it possible that mid-range officers - the ones who actually command troops - might drop the regime if they conclude that it will fall and they don't want to fall with it.

In many revolutions there's a tipping point where large numbers of people inside the tent conclude that the ship is sinking and they don't want to sink with it. The question is where this tipping point is in the Syrian case. Probably nobody has a really good answer, but it will be interesting to see.