Syria and the US: The complicity of silence

"Washington’s overt – and covert – support for the rebels is playing into President Bashar al-Assad's hands, allowing him to claim he is fighting foreign intervention rather than domestic dissent, while also giving him space to fight back as brutally as he wants with no immediate threat of military involvement by the US, NATO, or other western powers."
I think that should be 'rhetorical', rather than 'overt' or 'covert'.