President Obama says the U.S. has "serious interests" in Syria, but he is aware of the pitfalls of over-involvement in the civil war there.

"It is very easy to slip slide your way into deeper and deeper commitments," Obama told Charlie Rose of PBS, because people will always want to do more if things don't go well.

"Now, on the other side there are folks who say, you know, 'we are so scarred from Iraq. We should have learned our lesson. We should not have anything to do with it,'" Obama said. "Well, I reject that view as well because the fact of the matter is, is that we've got serious interests there."

In his first public comments since the administration announced stepped-up aid to the rebels in Syria, Obama warned of "ongoing chaos in a major country" which borders a major ally in Jordan, which in turn borders Israel.

But lethal assistance -- which Obama would not detail -- must be done "in a careful, calibrated way" and that can be unsatisfying for all sides, the president told Rose.

"What people really typically want is a clean solution, a silver bullet," Obama said, but none exists.

Rose and PBS taped the interview with Obama on Sunday, hours before the president left for the G-8 summit in Northern Ireland.

Obama, repeating evidence that Bashar Assad's government has used chemical weapons against the rebels, outlined his hopes for Syria:

"The goals are a stable, non-sectarian, representative Syrian government that is addressing the needs of its people through political processes and peaceful processes.

"We're not taking sides in a religious war between Shi'a and Sunni. Really, what we're trying to do is take sides against extremists of all sorts and in favor of people who are in favor of moderation, tolerance, representative government, and over the long-term, stability and prosperity for the people of Syria."

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