CIA drones over Damascus; preparing to "thin the herd"

I gather that the phrase "thin the herd of a future insurgency" is technical jargon for killing off the jihadists after they've killed off Assad.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the CIA is moving the surveillance infrastructure into place to unleash a drone war on "radical" elements within the Syrian opposition. That would be the very elements who have provided what limited forward motion the opposition has achieved as the insurgency against Assad enters its third year.

Which raises at least one question; if the US has made a commitment to using drones to cleanse Syria of militants they don't approve of, why not just use them to get rid of the Syrian president they don't approve of?

Would that not at least hurry the "revolution" along and possibly save some of the lives being sacrificed in the present war of attrition between Assad and the rebels?

The strategic thinking must be that such an intervention would give the appearance that Assad was removed by the US rather than by a "homegrown" uprising. By allowing the civil war to run it's course,  and then interceding on behalf of the "moderates" in their inevitable showdown with the militants, we preserve the fiction that US drone strikes in Syria are simply a continuation of the war on Al Qaeda.

So while the array of fictional narratives multiplies, the truth becomes increasingly obvious. The uprising so carefully orchestrated by the democracy promoters in Washington for the last ten years has been hijacked by Jabhat al Nusra, who will sooner or later face the full fury of the American military so that Syria can be handed to our "moderate" stooges in the London-based opposition.