Gen. Dempsey: "I would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me the opposition movement in Syria at this point!"

'He is not looking for a fight with anyone'

(CNN) -- "The United States is not interested in providing weapons to opposition forces in Syria until it has a better picture of what those forces are, the top U.S. military officer said in an interview aired Sunday.

"I think it's premature to take a decision to arm the opposition movement in Syria, because I would challenge anyone to clearly identify for me the opposition movement in Syria at this point," Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."... ...

"There’s indications that al-Qaeda is involved and that they’re interested in supporting the opposition. There's a number of players, all of whom are trying to reinforce their particular side of this issue. And until we're a lot clearer about, you know, who they are and what they are, I think it would be premature to talk about arming them," Dempsey said... ...

Supporters of intervention point to the results in Libya, where U.S. and NATO airstrikes helped an armed rebellion topple longtime strongman Moammar Gadhafi last August. But Dempsey said Syria is "a very different challenge," since the opposition controls very little territory and Syria has a more capable military than did Libya...Dempsey identified “a Sunni-Shiite competition for, you know, regional control,” of Syria being played out between Saudi Arabia and Iran as a key barrier to U.S. intervention, as well as Damascus’s “very capable,” military. “They have a very sophisticated, integrated air defense system. They have chemical and biological weapons. They haven’t demonstrated any interest or any intent to use those, but it is a very different military problem,”... "