If I may...
I live in the US and pay close attention to this government. By the time that overt involvement is admitted you can be guaranteed that the covert involvement has been going on for a long time. We are, after all, talking about the CIA whose black budgets are not even subject to any kind of oversight. The CIA, along with it's friendly front, the State Dept, interfere with and overthrow foreign governments for a living. They don't make formal announcements about their criminal activities.
With all due respect, according to my personal opinion, I don't think you understand the regional dynamics very well, like the people in your state department. I will try to give you a picture from my perspective.
What Neocons did was stupid, but it has become irrelevant now. There are people here from the region, it would help if you would ask them questions. One big problem is that we have now two sides and everyone is engaged in propaganda, so you have to filter that out to make sense of what people are saying.
Israel and many Sunni Arab and most Muslim countries are on US/NATO side, whereas Shia Iran and Pakistan are on opposing SCO(China+Russia) side. To make matters more complicated, US/EU is still biggest market for Chinese export. So the US is essentially financing its own defeat.
Russia has a base in Tartus, Syria is dependent on both Iran and Russia. Iran is dependent on both Russia and China. Russia and China are partners in SCO. This SCO group does not want to loose their lone outpost and base on Mediterranean.
Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld and co. promoted the Al Qaeda brand to run their "war on terror" (GWOT), now its coming back to bite the US. After two meaningless wars, when the US action was really needed here, Obama takes his hands off and hesitates to get involved, which allows Sunni extremists to stream in and become dominant. I opposed both wars and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but in this Syrian situation Obama declared at the initial stages that "Assad must go", but he did not follow up his words with action.
The biggest confusion comes from the fact that these Sunni extremists are a confused and clueless lot, they are not controlled by any central authority and they are easily manipulated by people with agenda and thus become foot soldiers. The Shia extremists on the other hand are focused and organized and they seldom have disorganized non-state actors. Assad and Hezbollah, they are the state in their respective country, even though Hezbollah is a terrorist group and Assad is the terrorist ruler. They coordinate closely with Tehran and Tehran coordinates closely with SCO capitals. By taking a hands off approach, the US/NATO/Israel have lost a golden opportunity to create credibility and good will in Sunni Arab and Muslim countries, much of which was lost due to two meaningless intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the US essentially removed dominant Sunni's and installed Shia's in Iraq and Iran friendly Northern Alliance nominally headed by Karzai in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now firmly in SCO hand as Iran and Pakistan are both close to China. All the US did in Afghanistan was waste blood and treasure for no good reason and in Iraq, the US actually hurt its own interest, by helping Iran and SCO. Some people still question whether Iraq's Shia will choose the US over Iran. Iraq will just put on a show of being a US ally to get economic and strategic benefits, while their real behind the scenes ally will always be Iran and SCO.
So now the Shia side and people backing them are using the Al Qaeda brand to label all of us who support Syrian rebels as either terrorists or terrorist supporters, another classic example of blow back, this time in the form of propaganda brand. I am a Sunni Muslim, so obviously I support the Syrian rebels and oppose Shia supremacy, so now one Iranian is repeatedly calling me a "Wahabi terrorist". When I complained an reported this to the mods, they gave me an infraction instead.
If you are a peacenik and oppose war in principle then I guess we would not have much to discuss, as I believe that there is constant cold or hot often proxy war going on between the main rival groups of countries of the world. And China is getting ready to challenge US/NATO supremacy on world stage (not just South China sea and East China sea) with its SCO grouping, that is the larger background of these on going smaller regional conflicts.
There is ZERO evidence that the Syrian government used chemical weapons. On the contrary, in fact, the last time they were used the UN said it was the 'rebels' and the sarin was determined to be homemade, delivered on homemade rockets. Syrian forces not only don't need to resort to such idiocy because they have a big conventional military, but to use such things, just 10 miles from the hotel where UN inspectors were staying would be retarded. Everyone knows that using CW only means the the western powers, be they NATO or just the USA, now has their excuse to bomb the sh*t out Syria. Do you honestly believe that Assad is so stupid as to invite the US to attack? The US has used "false flags" (an act by one party and blamed on another party) to start many wars, including in Vietnam.
You should go through this thread here:
http://www.defence.pk/forums/middle...ce-assad-forces-launched-chemical-attack.html