US General: Going into Syria Would Create 'Unintended Consequences'

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"The ghosts of Afghanistan and Iraq are vying with the ghosts of Rwanda and Kosovo," Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to Washington,  recently observed to the New York Times.

Dempsey, a veteran of multiple command tours in Iraq, further cautioned that all the options would only further the "narrow military objective" of pressuring Assad.

"Should the regime's institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control," Dempsey said.

• This article was updated on 22 July to correct a line that said  Bashar al-Assad had "slaughtered" 90,000 people in the Syrian civil war. In fact the  UN estimates the total death toll, regardless of responsibility, to be about 93,000 people.