Aswat al-Iraq reports that a former Iraqi military pilot was killed while driving in east Mosul. Unexceptional, except that it reminded me of a rumor I heard in Iraq a few years ago, that the Kurdish government was determined to identify and kill everyone involved in the use of poison gas against Kurdish civilians in Halabja 25 years ago.

If that program of Kurdish vengeance does indeed exist, I've never seen it written about. Does anybody know more about this?

I recently read The Long Walk, a book about leading an EOD team on two tours in Iraq. It isn't really a narrative, more a prolonged rant. I think a better title would have been "The Crazy: A memoir of Iraq and after." But it certainly evoked Iraq for me in a way that many memoirs do not. It has a lot of lines that resonated with me -- I found myself reading the book for these:

--"Everything about Iraq sucked. I loved it."

--"No one drives through the center of Hawija unless forced: so much hate packed into such small space."

--"You are a different person on graduation day from the day you started [EOD school]. . . . It's like being a surgeon, except if you screw up, you die, not the patient."

--On driving an Iraqi dirt road at night: "Like snow flurries back home, the dust just reflected back at us what little light we gave off."

--"Sometimes, when the calls pile up, you can go from yesterday to tomorrow and never get to today."

--". . . so prodigious the blood soaking into the ground that it contaminates the oil reserves hidden beneath the rocky desert."

--"Two months later we had a Day of Five VBIEDs. By that time I was numb, my brain a tingle, and I have no memory of it at all."

--"Every moment you are being shot at you are blissfully, consciously, wonderfully, tangibly alive."

--Murphy's Law: "The odds say Murphy always win in the end."

--"I died in Iraq. The old me left for Iraq and never came home . . . . I liked the old me. . . . Everyone longs for the old me. No one particularly wants to be with the new me. Especially me."

--"Until one day, seemingly out of the blue, it surprised me walking down the street. I stepped off a curb normal. I landed Crazy." 

--"There are two of me now. The logical one watches the Crazy one."

--"my first thought is always the same. Will I be Crazy today? And the answer is always 'yes' before my feet hit the floor."

--Considering going back for another tour in Iraq: "The Crazy purrs its approval."

--"Twitch. The left eye has been bad today."

--"When the depravity of this world is laid before you in its ruin, and you discover yourself mired in it, rather than above, what hope do you have?"

--"Forget the starter's pistol. There is a finisher's pistol, and it could go off at any time."

By Gary Anderson

Best Defense chief buzkashi correspondent

Before we have an argument over who lost Afghanistan, we should make sure it is really lost. I'm sitting in Afghanistan as I write, and I can say that it hasn't gone anywhere. A score of pundits, many of whom have never been here, have written the place off.

At some point, we need to ask ourselves what we really expected from Afghanistan. As I remember it, we went in to rid the country of al Qaeda and associated foreign fighters. In 2001, the country was ruled by the Taliban, and they were giving sanctuary to Bin Laden and his minions; so we toppled their government, and put one in that would not tolerate al Qaeda. In the process, we decimated the terrorists' haven there. That is pretty much where we are today. So what is lost?

Somewhere along the line, we got into mission creep. Instead of being satisfied with a relatively stable but likely decentralized state, we encouraged our local allies to build a strong, centralized democracy on European lines in a country that lacks the infrastructure and traditions to have anything of the sort. That vision may simply have been a bridge too far. In its most peaceful periods, the entity that we call Afghanistan was more a region of communities that a nation-state. Those rare periods when it came under strong central rule were often the result of an exceptionally energetic and militarily capable leader, and central governance rarely survived that individual's passing. Afghanistan differs from Iraq in that respect. With its relatively flat terrain and fairly sophisticated road system, Iraq has always had a strong tradition of centralized rule.

Just because Afghanistan is not becoming France or Germany overnight, we should not infer that it is incapable of keeping foreign fighters out of the areas that its security forces control. Many provinces and districts are remarkably well ruled at the local level, even when the government in Kabul fails to give them the type of support that they desire or believe they deserve. Most of these places fall within the security bubble provided by the Afghan National Army (ANA). Although imperfect and immature, the ANA has become the most respected Afghan governmental institution, and many of its commanders show an ability to work with local governments and non-governmental organizations that exceeds the standards of Central Asia and the Middle East. That may be as good as it gets in the near term.

As to the places that the Afghan surge never reached, we may need to rely on other means than conventional governance to keep al Qaeda and its surrogates out. That may come in the form of an agreement with the Taliban in areas that they still control to exclude al Qaeda and other foreign jihadists. We might also employ some combination of paying local militias to hunt the foreigners down and counter-terror operations by special operations forces.

While less than optimum, Afghanistan today presents much less of a haven for international terrorism than its neighbor Pakistan. Contrast Afghanistan with Somalia, a country we decided to abandon to its own fate in 1993 when we decided that it was not a threat to United States national security. Today, we see an active network of al Qaeda affiliates operating openly. Lacking even the semblance of a national government to work with or bases with which to launch counter-terror strikes, we are forced to tinker at the margins of a growing base for international terrorism. There are countries on the verge of becoming like Somalia, but that are not as bad off as Somalia is, or Afghanistan was, when we first arrived.

The real benefit of the lessons we have learned in Afghanistan through the expenditure of much blood and treasure may be in keeping places from Yemen and Mali from getting to the point where Afghanistan was in 2001. If, by using a relatively small cadre of Special Forces trainers and civilian advisors, we can stabilize troubled states before they fail or fall to radical Muslim insurgents, we should do so. In that regard, our experience in El Salvador in the eighties and early nineties of the last century may be more instructive than Iraq in the counter-terror operations of the future. However, we have learned much from both Iraq and Afghanistan. We largely know what works and what doesn't. The only tragedy of Afghanistan would be to forget what we have learned as we seemed to after Vietnam.

We haven't lost Afghanistan, it was never ours to lose, but we have given them a chance to decide what they are going to be. That's likely to be as good as it gets.

Gary Anderson, a retired Marine Corps Colonel, is an adjunct professor at the George Washington University's Elliott School. He has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan as a counterinsurgency and governance advisor for the Department of Defense and the Department of State.

We've shared more than a few stories of heroic canine feats in combat, stories about tenacious dogs that have literally charged down the enemy in the face of bullet spray or climbed on top of their fallen handler to protect him from further harm. And while there's no doubt this life-and-death devotion runs both up and down the leash in equal measure, we don't often hear about a handler taking a bullet for his dog. But according to his sister, that's just what handler Sgt. Aaron Yoder did for his bomb-sniffing canine, Bart.

To be clear, there are few reported details about what transpired on April 9, the day Yoder was injured. We know that he and Bart (who was not hurt in the attack) were "attached to Alpha troop 4-73 Cavalry Regiment, 4th brigade 82nd Airborne division" patrolling for IEDs when the unit engaged in a firefight "with Taliban fighters while on a mission in the Maiwand district in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan." Reuters photographer, Baz Ratner, was on the scene when a bullet hit Yoder's right leg. Ratner captured not only the fight but also Yoder's rescue, as his fellow soldiers dragged the wounded handler from danger so he could be medevaced to safety.

In the days following, as Yoder was being transported back to the states for medical treatment, local news teams interviewed Yoder's family, and while no official military source has released this information, they are certain the bullet that hit their son was meant for his partner, Bart, a black Labrador retriever. "I am so proud of him and what he did to protect his dog," his sister, Mandy Green told reporters earlier this week.
The Taliban has caught on to how well these bomb-sniffing dogs do their job and are, without a doubt, targeting them. The working dynamic of the IED-detection teams always puts the dogs in front -- that is the reality of their mission. But that doesn't mean handlers don't -- or more to the point, wouldn't -- put themselves in harm's way to protect their dogs. I've had a number of handlers tell me that they've wrapped their kevlar-protected bodies around their dogs during a firefight to keep them safe. While MWDs are issued protective vests, the gear can be cumbersome or cause overheating and an unexpected attack can catch these teams off guard with the dogs exposed.

On April 13, Yoder's family set up a public Facebook page titled "Aaron and Bart Updates" so they could share news of Aaron's recovery with friends and family. The 25-year-old handler has already undergone five surgeries on his leg but so far seems to be doing quite well. There is also talk of Bart returning to the states to join his handler.

As of this morning, this was their latest posting:

Aaron will undergo his 6th and hopefully one of the last surgeries tomorrow morning. This one will take a couple of hours but should be effective in the next steps in recovery. Once we have a concrete update on Bart and his status we'll share as soon as we know/hear anything. Thank you all again for your prayers and support during this time."

The family has also provided a mailing address for those who would like to send well wishes.

Rebecca Frankel, on leave from her FP desk, is currently writing a book about military working dogs, to be published by Free Press.

It is striking to me how little President Obama says about the war in Afghanistan.

The situation reminds me a bit of Iraq late in President Bush's term. Bush had no credibility on the issue, so had to rely on General Petraeus to become the face and voice of the war. It wasn't fair to Petraeus, maybe, but someone had to do it, and Petraeus did, most notably in the September 2007 Senate hearings that effectively quashed congressional sentiment for a quick withdrawal.

But that isn't the problem now. I think Obama has a good deal of credibility on foreign policy and national security issues, perhaps more than any Democratic president since FDR (although the extraordinary narrowness of the backgrounds of Obama's White House national security team continues to worry me -- basically they are Hill rats and political hacks). Maybe there just isn't that much to say about the war. But I think there is.

If the Petraeus parallel held, either General Mattis (the Centcom commander) or General Allen (the commander in Afghanistan) would step in. But Mattis apparently has been muzzled by President Obama, and Allen still seems to be getting accustomed to the white-hot glare of global publicity. I actually think the gag on Mattis is a mistake -- the American people like straight talk, even if it doesn't play well in Washington.

I think I've mentioned that I can't find a good operational history of the Afghan war so far that covers it from 2001 to the present. (I actually recently sat on the floor of a military library and basically went through everything in its stacks about Afghanistan that I hadn't yet read.)

Here are some of the questions I would like to see answered:

--What was American force posture each year of the war? How and why did it change?

--Likewise, how did strategy change? What was the goal after al Qaeda was more or less pushed in Pakistan in 2001-02?

--Were some of the top American commanders more effective than others? Why?

--We did we have 10 of those top commanders in 10 years? That doesn't make sense to me. 

--What was the effect of the war in Iraq on the conduct of the war in Afghanistan?

--What was the significance of the Pech Valley battles? Were they key or just an interesting sidelight?

--More broadly, what is the history of the fight in the east? How has it gone? What the most significant points in the campaign there?

--Likewise, why did we focus on the Helmand Valley so much? Wouldn't it have been better to focus on Kandahar and then cutting off and isolating Oruzgan and troublesome parts of the Helmand area?

--When did we stop having troops on the ground in Pakistan? (I know we had them back in late 2001.) Speaking of that, why didn't we use them as a blocking force when hundreds of al Qaeda fighters, including Osama bin Laden, were escaping into Pakistan in December 2001?

--Speaking of Pakistan, did it really turn against the American presence in Afghanistan in 2005? Why then? Did its rulers conclude that we were fatally distracted by Iraq, or was it some other reason? How did the Pakistani switch affect the war? Violence began to spike in late 2005, if I recall correctly -- how direct was the connection?

--How does the war in the north fit into this?

--Why has Herat, the biggest city in the west, been so quiet? I am surprised because one would think that tensions between the U.S. and Iran would be reflected at least somewhat in the state of security in western Afghanistan? Is it not because Ismail Khan is such a stud, and has managed to maintain good relations with both the Revolutionary Guard and the CIA? That's quite a feat. 

Anybody got a recommendation on what to read that covers all this? Maybe articles that explain some of it?

By LTC Kevin D. Stringer, Ph.D., USAR

Best Defense guest book reviewer

Robert Cassidy's War, Will and Warlords, (PDF will soon be made available for free), a study of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan and Pakistan, is a must read for all scholars, policymakers, diplomats, and military practitioners seeking to understand the Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus. Cassidy provides a number of salient points concerning uneven U.S. involvement in the region, the contradictions of Pakistan, and the counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches implemented on both sides of the porous region between the two states.

For the United States, Cassidy offers insights into how short-term and ill-advised American policies -- the support of the mujahedeen and Pakistani President Zia to name just two -- created the conditions that spawned Al-Qaeda and provided the Taliban on both sides of the Pashtun frontier a popular support base. Cassidy further demonstrates how U.S. financial aid underwrites Pakistan's military expenditures against India, which destabilizes the entire region.

Concerning Pakistan, the author explores its security policies, and how they contradict American strategy. Pakistan is Janus -- one "face" grudgingly supporting the United States with the Pakistani Army conducting operations against the Taliban on its side of the border, while the Pakistani intelligence service "face" promotes and supports the Afghan Taliban as a proxy against the Karzai government and India on the other side.

In his discussion of counterinsurgency, Cassidy illustrates that both the American and Pakistani militaries struggle in these operations because of embedded institutional and structural propensities for conventional war. For legitimacy, the insurgents challenge the Afghan and Pakistani administrations in the outlying tribal regions given low governmental presence and high levels of endemic corruption. For this theme, I would have liked to see the author engage in a more detailed critique of the quality of Afghan forces being trained by the United States for pacification efforts -- are they "shake and bake" or competent troops? Similarly, Cassidy's sober assessment of the capacity building projects executed to date would have added greater insight to campaign progress. These omissions left me with an uneasy feeling that Coalition and Afghan government efforts may not be as positive as described in the text.

The book is well-researched, and the author's soldier-scholar credentials are impeccable. Colonel Cassidy is a military professor at the U.S. Naval War College with both scholarship and experience in irregular warfare and stability operations. With a PhD from the Fletcher School at Tufts University, he has served as a special assistant to two general officers, a special operations strategist, and published two previous books, one on peacekeeping and the other on counterinsurgency.

My one major concern with the book is the chosen publisher, the Marine Corps University Press, whose marketing capacities may limit its wider dissemination. This book definitely deserves a broad readership given its relevance to U.S. policy-making in the region and future military campaigns.

Kevin D. Stringer, PhD, is an associate professor at Webster University, Geneva campus, and a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve.

I caught up with retired Gen. Richard Cody on Monday morning and asked him if Douglas Feith or another Rumsfeld follower had pressured the Army to retire Maj. Gen. Tony Taguba after Taguba filed his report on abuses and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Absolutely not, Cody said. "The reason Tony didn't go any farther, and retired as a two-star general, was that it was his time," he said. Despite Taguba's suspicions, there was no pressure from the Rumsfeld crowd, he added. (This rings true to me -- I once attended a lecture for new Army generals that informed them that all their careers would end with a phone call telling them it was their time to retire.)  

As for the Taguba report itself, Cody added, "Tony did a pretty damn good job, I thought. I was proud of him. . . He spoke truth to power."

Here is an excerpt from the testimony yesterday of Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, to the Senate Armed Services Committee:

This last year we had about 2,200 night operations. Of those 2,200 or so night operations, in 90 percent of them we didn't fire a shot. On more than 50 percent of them, we got the targeted individual, and in 30 percent more we got the next associate of that individual as well. So 83 percent, roughly, of the night operations we got either the primary target or an associate.

In all of those night operations, even with 10 percent where we fired a shot, there was less than 1.5 percent civilian casualties. Now, I don't diminish any civilian casualties by reducing it to a percentage point. Every one of those is tragic. But after 9,200 night operations, 27 -- 27 -- people were killed or wounded in night operations. That would argue for the power of night operations preserving life and reducing civilian casualties in all other kinds of operation than necessarily being a risk of creating additional civilian casualties. That's in my mind, sir, as we go through the process of negotiating an outcome for the Afghanization, if you will, of night operations.

Scroll down on the page to this discussion of the CONOP process in Afghanistan.

I wouldn't normally go all Assange-ish and post such a highly classified video, but there is a higher good here -- we all can learn from studying this discussion.

I think so -- by moving to stabilize the oil market. I'd be interested in seeing a chart highlighting Saudi interventions in the oil market during American presidential election years.

Anyone know of such a study? My bet is that the Saudis tend to favor incumbents. 

Tarmiyah, a little town on the west bank of the Euphrates about 30 miles north of Baghdad, is one of the leading indicator towns in Iraq. When Tarmiyah is unhappy, it tends to mean that rural Sunnis are feeling pressure of some sort, I think. There was a rough little fight there that I wrote about in The Gamble. I mention it now because there was a gunfight with police there the other day, and an attack on the mayor's office.

By Zail Coffman

Best Defense ASSUALT (Agency for the Study of Small Unit Actions, Literature and Training) 

A reader "from one of our formerly rebellious southern states" wondered about comparisons between the last few major conflicts. In fact, a few years ago Jack Stuster and I conducted a study for DARPA to examine the widely held belief that surviving a few firefights enhances soldiers' and Marines' likelihood of surviving later, prolonged exposure to combat. The objectives of the study were to test the hypothesis concerning the relationship between experience and long-term survival in combat,  and to identify factors with training implications that contribute to casualties and survival during firefights.

We reviewed more than 400 accounts of military firefights, finding 208 that provided sufficient detail for analysis. We formed a database of firefight experience encoded for 88 variables (operational, environmental, outcome, etc.); becoming quite familiar with the genre we came to call "Lieutenant Lit." We also conducted personal interviews and correspondence with a sample of highly-experienced com­bat veterans. The database includes engagements from 1966 to 2009 and includes U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Naval Special Warfare, several actions involving coalition partners and accounts from the Soviet-Mujahedeen war.

Statistical analysis of the data found substantial evidence to support the study's primary hypothesis. We determined that, on average, mission outcome improves following units' third firefight and survival rate improves following units' fourth engagement. In addition, we identified survival factors, casualty factors, and lessons learned from the database of firefight accounts, interviews, and correspondence with subject matter experts. We found five categories of skills, knowledge, and behaviors and listed them in order of their contribution to survival during firefights: Weapons Proficiency, Situational Awareness, Tactics and Drills, Cover and Concealment, and Leadership/Communications. Nothing new (humans have been at this for a few thousand years), but our methods allowed us to statistically determine the criticality of the first four engagements, identify specific examples of the skills and behaviors that contribute to casualties and survival; and quantify the relative significance of the factors and place them in order of priority.

Unfortunately, the research proponents moved on to other assignments and the project was terminated after its initial phase. An article describing the study results was approved for public release and has been accepted by the Proceedings of the Naval Institute but publication has been hanging fire for some months now. Distribution of the project report is limited to US Government personnel.

Zail Coffman, a Vietnam veteran, is a technical writer in Gaviota, California, which, like Dustin Hoffman and Paul Giamatti, you probably have driven through without even knowing it. I know I have.

By "A Syrian-American"

Best Defense guest column

The Bashar al-Assad regime now faces itself with the dilemma of quelling a quickly proliferating armed insurgency that has fused with a popular uprising. Cities like Homs, Zabadani, Rastan, and Idlib have become modern day ghettos, sealed off by special task forces of elite units and paramilitary squads specifically recruited to cleanse neighborhoods and towns of those who dare to resist the Baathist diktat.

By many definitions, Syria has become ensnared in a full-fledged civil war. But beyond the narrative of internal strife, when one takes a careful look at a map of where the uprisings are taking place and the towns that have effectively ceased to recognize the government, a competing narrative emerges not of internecine conflict but one of national unity -- a whole country that has been brought together in opposition to the Assad family's self-declared right to rule.

The people in this archipelago of resistance cling to a hope -- perhaps foolishly -- that their cause will win the day. Like any illegitimate occupational force, the Assad loyalist army can only control the ground occupied by its Soviet-era tanks. Take out the saturation of paramilitary, heavy artillery, and special forces units in the cities, and the popular rebellion will reach critical mass.

For Syrians attempting to survive, there is no illusion of life under the Assad tyranny. The executions of captured defectors, and the past executions of leading non-violent activist heroes like Ghaith Mattar speak to the reality that there can be no reconciliation with the mass murderers of the Baath Party.

The delusions of dialogue and a negotiated settlement with the Assad apparatus have long faded. One cannot negotiate, let alone reason, with a government that makes mass killings its domestic policy. In every way, the ideology and the solution being employed by Bashar al-Assad and his confidants are neo-fascist in function and form.

Reaching the tipping point to this conflict will require a determined shove by the international community. There are broader regional interests in play, and a rebel victory can prove to be a damning blow to Iranian hegemonic aspirations that have claimed the lives of freedom-seeking Syrians in addition to the Americans who have fallen victim to Iranian-supplied weaponry throughout the region. The rebels now claim that they are fighting the same Hizballah and Iranian revolutionary guard forces in Syria that have wrought so much havoc across the world for the West.

Hundreds of civilians have needlessly died since U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay's presciently warned the U.N. General Assembly that the ongoing assault and shelling by Bashar al-Assad's forces against the city of Homs presented a "harbinger of worse to come." Among the dead are journalists who perished attempting to show the world just how real, and how tragically correct, Pillay had been -- and just how wrong the assembly of global leadership have proved in their stupor.

To further punctuate the consequences of paralysis, Pillay rightly cautioned the General Assembly that the failure of the U.N. to enact "collective action" was actually "emboldening" the Assad regime to escalate the violence against his own people. Since the U.N. human rights report presented by Pillay was published, the regime, sadly, has launched a second concerted campaign to retake rebel-held territory in the north while simultaneously pouring hundreds of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles into the strategic mountain town of Zabadani on the Lebanese border.

By the time you read these words, more cities will have come under siege. Hoping that the world will see them, the residents of the town of Ar Rastan, an essentially liberated town, have written in large rock formations the words "S.O.S," hoping that they would be seen from the sky. Their eyes turn upwards not just in the hope of salvation from the nightmare that many are now living, but in the desire for a lifeline that provides support beyond tired platitudes.

The U.S. State Department even published satellite imagery of the formations of artillery batteries and tanks that are pummeling cities en masse. Perhaps it was done to shame the regime and its allies. The real shame is now borne by those who watched those armor columns and the screaming 120 mm shells slam into the homes of the innocent -- and did nothing.

The imperative for bold American action has never been stronger. While the Qataris and the Saudis have openly called for the funding and material aid of the rebels, the Turks have made it clear that they are not willing to go all in without some degree of U.S. backing. As uncomfortable as it may be, an end-game in Syria will require a level of U.S. involvement, whether be it direct or through an indirect approach.

Moral clarity can be best guided by this realization: this regime has concluded that in order to control the ghettos that have risen against it, they must be razed. The late Hafez al-Assad did this to one city in the past, Hama, that rebelled against his authority in 1982. Today, the younger Assad faces many more situations, and is displaying an equal determination to destroy them all.

And so the world now has a front-row seat to the play-by-play gradual demolition of homes, neighborhoods, and of whole families -- their liberation cut short by a vengeful, cruel, and cynical regime. The aftermath, as it were, is already visible for all to see in horrid detail. Yet western leaders continue to balk at taking a bold position, fearing that supporting the rebels in any form could somehow enable religious extremists and Al Qaeda.

Secretary Clinton was wrong when she suggested that supporting rebel forces could benefit al Qaeda. Yes, it is true that al Qaeda's leader Ayman Zawhiri declared his solidarity with the rebels and called on jihadis to support their cause. But in his distant Waziristan cave, the disconnected Zawhiri is a feckless general commanding phantom legions. There is no room for an Islamic Emirate in Syria. Liberation is not a slippery slope to rule by the clerics. The fighters are not looking to replace a mustached dictator with a bearded one. The Muslim Brotherhood is widely viewed in suspicion by the revolutionary councils and rebel fighters alike. It makes little sense to cede the ground to the jihadis in Syria when their program carries little credibility among the rebels and the majority Sunni Arab populace. It will be municipal elections and the desire to reawaken a civic involvement that is truly invested in their country's future that will occupy the daily concerns of Free Syrians -- not the resurrection of the caliphate.

The end of the Assad regime will not immediately usher in a grand new era of democracy and functioning governance, but the sooner the first steps are taken towards this transition, the more any negative fallout can be mitigated and safely contained. This will be good for Syria, the region, and more broadly Western interests.

To achieve their vision for victory, from Homs to Deraa, the revolutionary councils that guide the day-to-day insurrectionist activity and the rebel networks they support are looking to the U.S., EU, and the Gulf countries for aid. There is growing disillusionment of the timid international response and of the apparent lack of willingness by the West to support the revolution. According to rebel reports, even those Syrians who volunteered to fight U.S. forces in Iraq have expressed their support for receiving American aid to fight the regime.

Some Western commentators have opined that opposition groups on the ground are disorganized and incapable of overthrowing the regime. They are wrong. The capability to take on Assad forces exists and the possibility of a rebel victory is real, but this outcome becomes more realistic in the near future if enabled and supported with material aid.

The rebels have proven their bona fides; regime security forces even with overwhelming firepower took weeks before they could enter the Baba Amr neighborhood in Homs -- and that's just one neighborhood. As any rebel force does, the one in Syria fights and retreats and fights again as it gathers additional strength from its popular support. But there are no Benghazis here. Alone they can at best put forth a heroic stand that will lead to a prolonged stalemate. With aid, they can end the violence, and the Assad-sponsored killing fields, by ending the regime.