MINNEAPOLIS — In October, USA Today listed “16 times President Obama said there would be no boots on the ground in Syria.” The report came on the heels of Obama’s plan to send in 50 special ops troops, though reportedly not for combat.

Flash-forward to April: What went from no boots on the ground, to 50 boots on the ground, suddenly became 250 boots on the ground.

While the State Department has pointed out that it specifically does not dispute the fact that “we have troops on the ground, and they’re wearing boots,” these soldiers don’t qualify as “boots on the ground” in the administration’s calculus.

It’s important, though, that we don’t put these semantics aside. There are important distinctions to be made between large-scale ground troops on combat missions and those deployed in an “aid and assist capacity,” as the latest wave of boots on the ground in Syria and 4,000 troops in Iraq are currently deployed.

Yet, given the ongoing propaganda train that’s pushing U.S. intervention in Syria, it’s become increasingly difficult to believe that these 250 boots on the ground will be the extent of U.S. involvement there. Indeed, even without sending in any troops, the U.S. and its allies like NATO and Gulf states have already intervened in Syria.

What has that intervention looked like so far? And what should we expect moving forward?

Here to pull back the curtain on the forces at work in Syria is Vanessa Beeley, an investigative journalist who covers the Middle East for 21st Century Wire. She discusses the media manipulations putting a pro-intervention spin on the Syrian crisis that’s left 300,000 Syrians dead, 3 million roaming the world as refugees, and 6.5 million internally displaced.

Learn more about using students as a commodity, and the propaganda train pushing for US intervention in Syria: