US General Dempsey in Israel - is a no fly zone , 40 km buffer zone limited kinetic action looming ( Libya redux ) for Syria - to support Al Qaeda rebel forces ( not sure if this is part of core al qaeda we have on the run or the spreading cancer variety - that are currently droning in Yemen ? )

http://www.debka.com/article/23191/Dempsey-in-Israel-Jordan-to-tie-last-ends-before-Obama-decides-finally-on-US-military-action-in-Syria

Chairman of the US Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey arrived in Israel Monday, Aug. 12 for critical talks with Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, followed by parallel talks in Jordan. DEBKAfile reports he has come to lay the ground ahead of President Barack Obama’s final decision to embark on limited US military intervention in the Syria civil war.
The Obama plan, if it goes forward, would involve Saudi Arabia, Emirates, Israel, Jordan and possibly Turkey. DEBKAfile’s Washington and military sources reveal its 11 high points - most of which were first reported exclusively in DEBKA Weekly 598 on Aug. 1:

1. US, British, French, Saudi and United Arab Emirates will establish a no-fly zone over central and southern Syria, stretching from the Jordanian-Israeli borders up to and including Damascus.

2.  The Israeli Air Force will provide these forces with air cover from Syrian air space.

3.  A 40-kilometer deep military buffer zone will be drawn from the Jordanian-Israeli borders up to the southern and western outskirts of Damascus. The military units controlling this zone will hold the entire area of the capital within artillery range.

4.  The southern Syrian town of Deraa, where the Syrian uprising sprang up, will be declared capital of Liberated Syria.

5.   President Obama has determined that there will no American troops in the buffer zone or anywhere else on Syrian soil, only special Syrian rebel forces.

6.  Those forces will consist of 3,000 fighters trained in Jordan by US military instructors. They will be headed by Jordanian special forces and operate under US officers based in Jordan.

7. To host them, the US Army has just finished building in the Hashemite Kingdom a huge training camp and logistical system, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. All the weapons and equipment required to train and arm the rebel force are already stacked there.

8.  The American operational command center for the Syrian operation is already in place in Amman led by US Brig. Gen. John Wright, who at 57 is a veteran of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

9.  The US air force units for imposing the no-fly zone over Syria are already in position at Middle East locations and ready to go at 36 hours’ notice.

10.  A Druze unit trained by US military instructors will be a key component of the special rebel force. It was put up by the million-strong community which populates 120 villages and towns in the Jabal al-Druze area of southern Syria. They are situated in a commanding position overlooking the Syrian-Jordanian-Iraqi border triangle.

11. US forces deployed in the Middle East, especially in Jordan and Israel, will stand ready for possible reprisals against American, Israeli, Jordanian or Turkish targets, if ordered by Syrian President Bashar Assad in retaliation for the no-fly and buffer zones. 

Syrians protest against al-Raqqa's new rulers

People living in northern city accuse fighters of abuses and unjustified detentions. Last Modified: 13 Aug 2013 00:59

Syrians in al-Raqqa, a stronghold for fighters linked to al-Qaeda, are holding protests against their new rulers. They are accusing the fighters of abuses and unjustified detentions. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, one of al-Qaeda's two official affiliates operating in Syria, has imposed its authority in the northern city for the past four months. Al-Raqqa is the only provincial capital no longer under the government's control. Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reports from Antakya, Turkey. As Iraqi al-Qaeda Surges Into Syria, the War Changes AQI Fighters Spearheading Fight in Kurdish Territory by Jason Ditz, August 12, 2013 Print This | Share This Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) made a very public show of its involvement in Syria, announcing a name change for its umbrella group form the “Islamic State of Iraq” to the “Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant” to reflect its regional ambitions, and sending a lot of seasoned fighters into Syria. The decision was announced months ago, and was seen as a major coup for the group and for the rebellion. Yet in retrospect AQI’s involvement has added a lot of combatants to the civil war, but very few of them are fighting the Assad government. AQI’s ambition to annex Jabhat al-Nusra was only partially realized, and it finds itself only one of many al-Qaeda affiliates and would-be affiliates on the ground now. It’s influx from Iraq has left it primarily interested in Syria’s northeast. And instead of fighting Assad, the AQI fighters have spent a lot of time attacking other rebel factions, assassinated FSA leaders it sees as too secular and attacking Western journalists and aid workers. The biggest impact they’ve had in Syria is starting an entirely separate war, with Syria’s Kurdish population. West Kurdistan was operating as a mostly autonomous region with the war seeing most of Syria’s military fighting elsewhere, and AQI has been trying to force the Kurds under rebel control. Indeed, the fighting with the Kurds has gotten so bad that Iraqi Kurdistan is openly threatening intervention against AQI and on behalf of the Syrian Kurds. Instead of being a decisive shift against Assad, AQI’s surge is changing the war and bringing a lot of rivals into direct conflict with one another. US Concerned as Syrian Opposition Urges ‘Unified’ Rebel Army US Not Comfortable With FSA Allying With al-Qaeda Fighters by Jason Ditz, August 12, 2013 Print This | Share This Protracted efforts to convince the US to bankroll and heavily support the Syrian rebellion appears have given the US the impression of strong influence over the actions of their clients, but that may not be the case. That’s because with US weapons about to begin showing up in significant numbers in the hands of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the Syrian National Coalition, the nominal political leadership of the rebellion, is calling for a “unified” rebel army with the FSA at the head. The so-called “National Free Army” would include everybody, according to SNC leader Ahmed al-Jabra. Everybody, for the record, would include an awful lot of al-Qaeda fighters across Syria, dominated by Jabhat al-Nusra and al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). That’s got the US concerned, with Gen. Martin Dempsey already warning that while “collaboration” with al-Qaeda wasn’t a big problem, US intelligence on Syria is going to have a hard time deciding where collaboration stops and alliance begins. That’s going to put the US in a tough spot, because while some officials, notably Sen. John McCain (R – AZ), have insisted that regime change in Syria trumps all others concerns, the blowback from US arms finding their way into al-Qaeda hands en masse is liable to be huge. CIA Claims Syria Is Top ‘Threat,’ And US Policy Is Making It Worse Outgoing Deputy Leader Frets Assad Govt Collapse by Jason Ditz, August 12, 2013 Print This | Share This Outgoing CIA Deputy Leader Michael Morrell raised more than a few eyebrows this weekend when in an interview he declared Syria to be the “top current threat to US national security,” a spot usually reserved for someplace the US is directly militarily involved in. The declaration is even more significant the deeper you get into Morrell’s comments, as he makes clear exactly what about Syria the CIA sees as a threat, saying the risk is that the Assad government “collapses and the country becomes al-Qaeda’s new haven.” That’s a problematic admission for a US official to make, even one that is heading into retirement, because the US has made the collapse of the Assad government it’s stated goal since the nation’s civil war began. Indeed, US policy toward Syria is centering on making the threat even greater, as the administration is poised to start arming rebel fighters who are openly cooperating with al-Qaeda to further their goal of ousting Assad, and setting up the exact Sunni-dominated Islamist government the CIA fears. Morrell warned that a collapse of the Assad government had a similar risk for weapons proliferation as the NATO-imposed regime change in Libya did, and that violence was likely to spill-over into Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. Of course the war is already spilling over to some extent in each of these cases, but it seems clear it will only get worse.