Actually not.Originally Posted by JMA
I'm trying - quite hard - to find out the extension of that 'involvement'. But, despite all the flashy media reports and no matter how much I tried, there is next to nothing to find. Indeed, I've spent the last few months finalizing the work on manuscript for a small book titled 'Syrian Conflagration, The Syrian Civil War, 2011-2013' (to be published by Helion Publishing Co., in the UK, later this year; see bellow for the cover), and interviewing - back and forth - several dozens of different contacts around the country. But there is nothing to be found about any serious sort of 'US involvement' there. The most one can get to hear is commentary like can be read here: Syrian Rebels Find Support, and Frustration, in Jordan
In total: scant shipments of support equipment (cars, comms), some money (less that a friction - really, not even 5% - of what is supplied by other sponsors of insurgency), and food is 'at most' one can track down.......When rebels want to return to Syria to fight, Jordan’s intelligence services give them specific times to cross its border. When the rebels need weapons, they make their request at an “operations room” in Amman staffed by agents from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States.
During more than three years of civil war in Syria, this desert nation has come to the world’s attention largely because it has struggled to shelter hundreds of thousands of refugees. But, quietly, Jordan has also provided a staging ground for rebels and their foreign backers on Syria’s southern front. In the joint Arab-American operations room in Amman, the capital, for example, rebels say they have collected salaries as an incentive not to join better-funded extremist groups.
But this covert aid has been so limited, reflecting the Obama administration’s reluctance to get drawn into another Middle Eastern conflict, that rebels say they have come to doubt that the United States still shares their goal of toppling President Bashar al-Assad.
In fact, many rebels say they believe that the Obama administration is giving just enough to keep the rebel cause alive, but not enough to actually help it win, as part of a dark strategy aimed at prolonging the war. They say that in some cases their backers even push them to avoid attacking strategic targets, part of what they see as that effort to keep the conflict burning.
“The aid that comes in now is only enough to keep us alive, and it covers only the lowest level of needs,” said Brig. Gen. Asaad al-Zoabi, a Syrian fighter pilot who defected and now works in the operations room.
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So, if at all, 'the CIA' is involved in operations apparently aiming to keep insurgency 'alive', but not more, while hampering any other 'grand designs' the Saudis, Qataris, and others might have.
That's working in some- (Saudi Arabia) and not working at all in most of cases (Qatar, Turkey, Kuwait).
Total effect of this is that a mass of ex-activists-cum-insurgents turned 'Islamists' over the time and did so because they didn't get anything at all from the West and - or 'but' - then began receiving aid from Islamists instead (exactly as described earlier: given enough time, extremists are going to spread their influence, which is the same that would have happened in Libya too, without a timely US/NATO intervention). Meanwhile, there appears to be effort to 'return some of them' back to 'moderates' (resulting in emergence of SF and SRF), but with idiotically stringent set of 'ROEs' for who might be accepted as 'returnee' and who not...
Especially since even the Hezbollah has issued 'security guarantees' for Israel (it's really ridiculous how everybody is keen to issue that kind of guarantees) many of insurgents (at least those in position to monitor developments abroad) are now convinced that the USA have sold Syria to Iran, in exchange for Iranians curbing their nuclear- and missile-related projects etc. (the new Iranian pres even went as far as to impose a moratorium on all the IRGC's missile testing; in exchange for this, the IRGC is so flush with money for ops in Syria, that the rest of Iranian military is 'on idle' since two years too).
So, if the US is 'up to its elbows in blood' - then because it's doing next to nothing to support people who expected its support. What's worse: because the US are acting that way, the rest of the West either did nothing, or followed in fashion.
From that aspect: yes, the US 'involvement' there is (utterly) misguided and misdirected: it has significantly contributed to destruction of the country as a sovereign nation for decades to come, and to turning genuinely laicist population into some 10-15 different factions based on ethnic- and religious lines, most of which are now at odds with each other.
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