Secretary of State John Kerry was the first senior Obama administration official to admit that thousands of Hizballah troops are fighting in Syria, citing the figure of 5,000. He warned the Lebanese terrorist group that its intervention would drag the Syrian war into Lebanon. At a news conference in the Jordanian capital Amman Wednesday, Kerry warned Bashar Assad that if he continued to refuse to discuss a political solution to end Syria's civil war, the United States and others would consider increasing support for his opponents.