The US, Britain and some other western nations are considering to increase their help to the syrian rebels. While so far mainly Qatar and Saudi Arabia have funded and armed the rebels, while Turkey, Jordan and lebanese elements provided the logistics and managed the weapons smuggling, Nato countries are thinking about involving themselves more intensively and directly in regime change efforts.

This is in that much puzzling as the rebels have committed a wide array of major crimes which they not even bothered to try to hide. Instead many attrocities such as kidnapping, torturing, executing/beheading pro-regime or otherwise opponent civilians (including palestinian refugees, old men, TV anchor men, journalists, movie actors, lawyers, teachers, athletes, doctors, pensioned army personel) in addition to frequent executing of military prisoners have been proudly announced, some times uploaded as gruesome video clips on Youtube.

One recent example is the hanging of pro-regime Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzpLl58aNxw

In view of the mounting crimes or at least dubious actions of the rebels,  some months ago their western backers decided to create the „Free Syrian Army“s „bad bank“, the Al-Nusra Front. So, whenver any ugly attrocities such as beheadings or suicide bombs in populated areas happen, not to mention the blasting and burning of religious sites of minorities the rebels are excused: It was Al-Nusra we are told. No matter that other groups like the Ahrar al Sham or the Liwa Tauheed have not very similar if not identic views as the Al-Nusra. We are supposed that the radical Salafists/Jihadists constitute only a minority within the FSA. When numbers are given about the Al-Nusra one reads no more than 3000 to 10000, but then one has to wonder how this militia has such omnipresence in this conflict: They are in Damascus suburbs, they take over the Yarmouk camp, they fight in Idlib, Homs, Hama and Aleppo, not only the cities but also the country sides and now they captured Raqqa, not to mention that they control many border crossings and are also active in Deir al Zour. All this with only 10000 men? Very unlikely.

Another example of the rebels brazenness which reflects their self-confidence due to the Wests almost total ignorance of their mischiefs is the hostage taking of UN peacekeepers in the Golan heights. While the rebels after 2 days still refuse to release the blue helmets UK foreign secretary is continuing to blame the Assad government one-sidedly and reiterates the need to widen the support for the rebels.

We are told that the rebels need armored vehicles to protect them, as though the rebels would abstain from using those vehicles for offensive military missions. The rebels are also supposed to get night vision goggles, but for what? Does Mr. Hague really think that rebels would not use those devices to attack army positions at night?

A tiny portion of the rebel crimes (see the links in this article https://radioyaran.wordpress.com/2012/12/21/besorgniserregend-toleranter-umgang-mit-syrischen-rebellen/)
if committed by Hamas or Hizbullah would be enough to align all western politicians along with the western press to denounce terrorism and crimes against humanity using phrases like „Hamas/Hizbullah exposed their criminal, evil nature…“