Many members who voted for tough stance on Syria now oppose military action

[stupidicus]

39. advisors/advising and training/materials aren't missile, etc strikes

and helping some group by providing them with such is not "attacking" militarily the enemy we're attempting to undermine.

it's pretty sad when you have to explain the diff between violent and non-violent involvement to someone that thinks they have a tenable argument that equates the two. While providing arms is illegal under international law, it ain't "the same" as the attacks you were hoping for, being a likely supporter of that "credible threat" thing, and that's the diff that shows no incongruity between what those congress critters voted for before and what they support now..

Of course they were trying to promote and support a regime change. Gee what's next, that's a war crime exactly like militarily attacking another country (war of aggression) without a UNSC res authorizing it?

Hardly, and you have no foundation for such a thing, and indeed, the case law on the matter shows the opposite.

Arming Syrian Rebels: Lethal Assistance and International Law
By Ashley Deeks
Wednesday, May 1, 2013 at 10:00 AM

On the Sunday talk shows, various members of Congress exhorted the United States to increase its assistance to the Syrian rebels, whether by providing them with additional (lethal) equipment, or by establishing a no-fly zone, or by entering Syria to secure its chemical weapons caches. Last night the Post reported that the Executive Branch is seriously weighing whether to arm the rebels. I wrote here about some of the international legal hurdles that the U.S. would confront in evaluating whether to use force directly in Syria. (A no-fly zone, which some have advocated, would fall into the “use of force” category.) But even the provision of lethal equipment to the Syrian rebels has implications in international law.

In Nicaragua v. United States, the International Court of Justice evaluated alleged U.S. assistance to the contra rebels, who were operating in and against Nicaragua. The Court concluded that the U.S. provision of arms and training to rebels “can certainly be said to involve the threat or use of force against Nicaragua.” This arming and training also violated the international legal principle of non-intervention. At the same time, the Court concluded that the provision of arms and financial and logistical support did not constitute an “armed attack.” That is, the Court drew a distinction between acts that constitute a use of force and those uses of force that are serious enough to count as “armed attacks.” Note what this means: in the ICJ’s view, providing arms to rebels violates the U.N. Charter, but it is not a serious enough violation to trigger the right of self-defense by the state that is on the receiving end of the rebels’ activity. There’s another point worth noting, too: The United States generally rejects the idea that there is a distinction between a use of force and an armed attack. (See then-State Department Legal Adviser Will Taft’s article here.) http://www.lawfareblog.com/2013/05/arming-syrian-rebels-lethal-assistance-and-international-law/

The only thing you've made a case for here, is that you think those congress critters should agree to be worse criminals than they already are, or suffer what, a "hypocrisy" charge from some obscure and largely unknown DU poster.

I'll go with the court's reasoning in this case, and not that of the warmongers like you.