The US Has Officially Given Up On The Free Syrian Army

Former administration officials and experts have refuted the idea that the opposition is only civilians, noting that tens of thousands of trained soldiers defected from Syria's army.

Allam notes that the FSA has issues including "a lack of cohesion, uneven fighting skills and frequent battlefield coordination with the al Qaida loyalists of the Nusra Front."

Nevertheless, the rebel force has a significant presence in Syria's largest city of Aleppo, for now. Forces fighting for the regime as well as ISIS are currently attacking them for multiple sides.

Hussam Marie, the Free Syrian Army spokesman for northern Syria, told The New York Times that the loss of FSA positions in and around Aleppo would be "unrecoverable" and "a blow to our shared goals of a moderate Syria."

Furthermore, it would play into Assad's strategy of facilitating the rise of ISIS and eliminating the Free Syrian Army, thereby presenting the West with "a classical choice between military powers and Sunni extremists."

Overall, the situation in Syria is beginning to look like an intensified version of the State Department's worst-case scenario as of June 2013: "rebel gains evaporating, the moderate opposition ... imploding, large ungoverned spaces [ruled by ISIS], Assad holding on indefinitely, neighbors endangered, and Iran, Hizbollah, and Iraqi militias taking root."

However, the Obama administration does not seem to mind Assad anymore, despite that fact that the Syrian dictator is overseeing an industrial torture and killing campaign unseen since the Nazis.

"Some U.S. officials are beginning to see Assad as a vital, de facto ally in the fight against the Islamic State," Gopal Ratman of Foreign Policy reports.

Many members of the larger US-led coalition believe that Assad is the root cause of rampant extremism in Syria - making him part of the problem as opposed to part of the solution.