Trump's Last Gasp in Syria

UPDATE: Today a Pentagon spokesman backed up last night's White House statement that the Syrian government was mixing up a batch of chemical weapons (in order to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory). According to "U.S. Has Seen Chemical Weapons Activity in Syria, Pentagon Says," by Helene Cooper and Ben Hubbard, which has run all day with only modest changes:

Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that what looked like active preparations for a chemical attack were seen at Al Shayrat airfield, which was struck in April by American cruise missiles two days after the Syrian government dropped bombs loaded with toxic chemicals in northern Syria. Another Defense Department official said that an aircraft shelter at Al Shayrat that had been hit by an American Tomahawk missile was being used for the preparation.

 Syrian and Russian officials rejected the accusation, calling the White House statement a provocation.

The Pentagon comments appeared to shore up the unusual statement Monday night by the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, who warned that Syria was preparing for what looked like another chemical weapons attack, and said that the United States would not hesitate to act if one was launched. But that statement appeared to take defense officials off guard. An official with the United States Central Command, which oversees combat operations in the Middle East, said Monday night that he had “no idea” what the White House statement was referring to.

A White House official said on Tuesday that relevant agencies, including the Pentagon, the State Department, the C.I.A. and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, had been involved in issuing the statement.

A defense official said that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis was aware of the movements at Al Shayrat and that the White House statement was coming. The situation “was very fast-moving,” the official said on Tuesday.

Since the divulged intelligence is so specific -- a bombed aircraft shelter at Al Shayrat -- why not go further and describe the suspicious movements? Are there men in hazmat bunny suits screwing canisters together?

Judging from the story's comments section, NYT readers are not buying it one bit. RoseMai from Boston, Mass. provides a representative point of view:

Between the WMDs, the Gulf of Tonkin, the Iran-Contra affair, etc. etc., I do not trust any US "intelligence" to tell United States citizens the truth. I would not be a single bit surprised if our government used false information to drag us into another foreign conflict.

And why Syria? There have been whole genocides thate've turned a blind eye to. This country does nothing on conscience alone.

No more! Focus on fixing what's wrong at home before even entertaining the idea of venturing abroad. We certainly have enough problems to keep us busy for a long time.

This contrasts will the lone opinion attached to the AP story of last night's White House statement that appears on the Kurdish news site Rudaw, The Kurdish Boy comments

Go ahead , and destroy all the enemies of America . Help the Kurds to bring peace and some humanity into a region ravaged by savagery. May God bless Trump and the Kurds.

I don't think he's being facetious.

The sentiment is not that much different on Eliot Higgins' Bellingcat website; it is just that with Higgins there is a greater degree of obfuscation. Take for instance Higgins' attempted refutation of Sy Hersh's latest, "Trump's Red Line." Higgins picks apart the inconsistencies between initial Syrian and Russian explanations of what happened at Khan Sheikhoun with the confidential source(s) Hersh relies on for his reconstruction of events:

In the face of allegations of chemical weapon use neither Russia nor Syria mention targeting “a jihadist meeting site”, and described the location as a “large warehouse” on the “eastern outskirts of Khan Shaykhun”, not a “two-story cinder-block building in the northern part of town” with “security, weapons, communications, files and a map center.” In fact, the only thing Hersh’s account and the Russian and Syria account agrees on is it was a Syrian aircraft which conducted the attack.

But Higgins completely ignores the 900-lb.gorilla that is the main focus of Hersh's piece in Die Welt. Information about the flight of the Syrian warplane that Higgins believes was the source of the sarin attack was fully shared by Russia with the United States over the deconfliction channel.

Does Higgins imagine that Russia would alert the U.S. to Syria's use of sarin? Maybe Higgins believes that the Syrians tricked the Russians and replaced the conventional bomb with a chemical weapon (which sounds like something from a 1960s situation comedy).

But now we're in "magic bullet" territory, which is where most of Higgins' arguments lead once the smoke clears and the mirrors crack. Higgins cannot ask the basic "Cui bono," but a commentator on his web site does:

Jim Miles - June 27, 2017
Follow the ‘needs’ – the U.S. needs an excuse to go after Assad regardless of Russia’s presence. The U.S. is the single largest purveyor of violence and creator of terror in the world. Another country dismembered (after Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya) will greatly help its control of US fiat petrodollar hegemony as well as to contain and deconstruct both Russia and China. The U.S.’ wonderful democratic progressive government of Saudi Arabia is fully in on this deal, along with its sidekick, Israel.The U.S. also has a first strike nuclear policy and the crazies within the deep state – and its not all that deep – are willing to create a situation In which it could use those weapons.

****

It appears the follow-up false flag to the April 4 Khan Sheikhoun attack is here. As the NYT reports:

WASHINGTON — The White House said late Monday that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria appeared to be preparing another chemical weapons attack, and warned that he would “pay a heavy price” if one took place.

Several military officials were caught off guard by the statement from President Trump’s press secretary, but it was unclear how closely held the intelligence regarding a potential chemical attack was.

In the statement, the White House said that Mr. Assad’s preparations appeared similar to the ones Western intelligence officials believe the Syrian government made before a chemical attack in April that killed dozens of Syrians, including children.

“As we have previously stated, the United States is in Syria to eliminate the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria,” the statement said. “If, however, Mr. Assad conducts another mass murder attack using chemical weapons, he and his military will pay a heavy price.”

I'm surprised that it took this long. Moon of Alabama explains that the timing has to to do with the G-20 summit in July:

During the last three days Al-Qaeda attacks on Syrian army position near the Israeli occupied Golan heights were supported by Israeli air attacks.

This all is clearly a coordinated operation by the "western" supporters of the Takfiris in Syria. Their aim is to prevent the victory of Syria and its allies and to split up the country.

The announced fake "chemical attack" and the "retaliation" it is supposed to justify will likely happen in the south-west of Syria around Deraa where all recent attempts by Israel and the U.S. supported Takfirs to dislodge the Syrian government forces have failed. The provocation, now prepared and announced by Macron and the White House and supported by the UK, is likely planned to happen shortly before or during the upcoming G-20 meeting in Hamburg:

President Trump and members of his administration are requesting a full bilateral meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Germany next month....

While some administration officials have pressed for a quick "pull-aside" meeting at the Group of 20 summit or lower officials talking privately instead of the heads of state, Trump wants an event that includes the media and time for work sessions, according to one government official.

Trump has to make a deal (or war) with Russia and the announced fake "chemical attack" will be the pressure point against Putin. The neoconservatives want to break up Syria and Trump is tasked to get the Russian agreement for that (... or else.) 

Syria insists that its has no chemical weapons nor any intention to use any indiscriminate weapon. Russia warns of any further military aggression and calls such U.S. threats unacceptable.

At this point Russia cannot buckle. To turn the other cheek again after the military campaign against the jihadists is progressing to its final stages would be to acquiesce to perpetual meddling by the U.S., Israel and the Gulf monarchies. Syria would be carved up; so too Iraq. Iran would be next as NATO marches continually eastward.

This appears to be the moment that Syria has been moving toward for the last six years. Remember Hassan Nasrallah explaining why Hezbollah was going all in in Syria? Because if Syria falls we're next. Syria is now on the verge of a victory, something that Israel and Saudi Arabia cannot abide. Trump is being made to walk the plank.

The anti-Trump prestige press I'm sure would like to protest, but they've painted themselves into a corner with their past fulsome support for Ghouta and Khan Sheikhoun. The best we get is from The Times story:

Monday’s message appeared designed to set the stage for another possible military strike. After Mr. Assad allegedly used chemical weapons in April, the American military fired 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the air base his government had used to launch the attack.

"[A]llegedly used chemical weapons" is an improvement on the usual bald assertion that Syria used sarin at Khan Sheikhoun. Maybe Sy Hersh's "Trump's Red Line," though assiduously ignored in the mainstream, is having an impact nonetheless.

Yesterday I contacted the guy, Paul McLeary, who aggregates Foreign Policy's daily Situation Report and asked him why no link to Hersh's story in Die Welt. He replied, "We squeeze in all we can, but some things, like a Hersh piece, need some serious vetting first."

To which I responded:

According to Die Welt, not what you would consider a fringe publication to begin with, "Trump's Red Line" has been vetted: "As has always been his practice, Hersh has told Welt am Sonntag [German Sunday paper; same publisher, Axel Springer, as Die Welt] the identities of all the sources he quotes anonymously in his story about Trump's retaliatory strike against Syria. The paper was thus able to speak independently to the central source in the U.S."

Andrew Cockburn tweeted yesterday about the universal silence that greeted "Trump's Red Line" in the mainstream: "No surprise. Reference Upton Sinclair: their salaries absolutely depend on not listening to Hersh."

Now at least we have arrived at the 11th hour. Either the war draws down or it becomes much larger. Better hope for the former

Public Opposes Bombing Syria

From this morning's Situation Report, by Paul McCleary and Adam Rawnsley:

And here’s something to chew on. In a new University of Maryland Critical Issues Poll, researchers explored Americans’ views on ISIS and Syria. And they found that around 60 percent of those polled — 67 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of Democrats, and 67 percent of independents — would like to see the United States work alongside Russia in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, according to FP’s Emily Tamkin.

Obama was prevented from bombing Damascus at the end of summer 2013 because of massive public outcry, which translated into pointed criticism from many members of Congress, both Democrat and Republican. It is good to see that not much has changed in the way of public opinion.

Failed Coup in Turkey: Not the Usual U.S. Color Revolution

As Erdogan rounds up his opponents following the failed coup of Friday night/Saturday morning (for a particularly good synopsis read this morning's Foreign Policy Situation Report by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley), it is worthwhile to question the level of support the putschists received from the United States. According to McLeary and Rawnsley:

How does this end? The Turkish government is lashing out in all directions, with a high-ranking member of the Erdogan government accusing Washington of directly helping to foment the putsch. Turkish Labor Minister Suleyman Soylu bluntly claimed over the weekend that “the U.S. is behind this coup attempt.” The comments “come on top of the long-standing U.S. criticism of Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies, which include opening roughly 2,000 legal cases against political opponents, journalists, comedians, and ordinary Turks accused of insulting the president,”  FP’s Yochi Dreazen writes.

Judging from the reaction to the coup's failure in the U.S. opinion pages, the labor minister appears to be on the money. The Gray Lady's unsigned editorial today calls Erdogan's reaction to the coup attempt a "countercoup" (see "The Countercoup in Turkey").

If the U.S. was involved it must have been in a passive role. The favored U.S. method of regime change after the shelving of "shock and awe" during the Obama administration is the color revolution format witnessed in Kiev's Maidan or the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong. In a color revolution there has to be a mass of protesters to act as a foil for the coup plotters. The scheme is to have the protesters elicit a crackdown by security forces. The police overreaction ignites the rebellion. But there was no popular uprising here. There were no Gezi Park protests of three years earlier.

In order for this to work the coup plotters had to take out Erdogan. When they failed to do this the coup could not succeed. Consider this from McLeary and Rawnsley:

Commando raids, F-16s. Some critical details of the scope of the insurrection emerged on Sunday, which included a daring special operations raid on the coastal resort where Erdogan had been staying which just failed to nab the leader, and a harrowing incident where two rebel-flown F-16 fighters followed the president’s plane on its way to Istanbul, locking radars on the jet, but failing to fire.

As the purge of the military continued on Sunday, one of those arrested was Gen. Bekir Ercan Van, the chief of Incirlik Air Base, from which the U.S. military flies missions over Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State. Reports have emerged claiming Van asked U.S. officials at the base for asylum, but was refused. The Greek government also finds itself in a tough spot after eight Turkish officers flew a helicopter to Greece in a bid for asylum. Turkey has demanded their extradition.

An attempt is being made to rewrite the U.S. reaction to the coup as one of immediate and fulsome support for the Turkish government. This is not how it went down in real time. Obama and Kerry were mum until it was clear that Erdogan would survive. Then they expressed their support.

Sanders Must Win Arizona

Before turning to two interesting posts -- Lambert Strether's "The Democrat Establishment Plan for a Three-Front Anti-Trump, Republican-Splitting, Anti-Left Campaign" and this morning's FiveThirtyEight chat "The Most Important States On Trump’s Path To 1,237 Delegates" -- let's get the latest on the terror attack in Brussels from the early morning Foreign Policy "Situation Report" by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley:

BREAKING: At least 13 people were killed and dozens more wounded at the Brussels international airport on Tuesday after two explosions rocked the departure area,collapsing part of the ceiling and spreading chaos. The attack -- which Belgian authorities said was a suicide strike -- came at the same time as another bomb went off at the city’s Maelbeek subway station. Belgian officials are reporting 15 dead and 55 injured in the subway blast. All flights and train service in and out of the country have been cancelled.

The attacks come just days after the main suspect in the November Paris attacks that killed 130 was arrested in Brussels, FP’s Lara Jakes and Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer write. The arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam heightened fears of more terror attacks in the country, as European officials warned that many people who were involved in the Paris attacks people were still at large. No group has claimed responsibility for the Brussels strikes, but the Paris attackers were affiliated with the Islamic State.

Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw called all three explosions “terrorist attacks,” and Prime Minister Charles Michel said, "we were fearing terrorist attacks and that has now happened." Witnesses to the attack at the airport described a bloody scene where water pipes burst, mixing with the blood of the wounded and dead as dazed survivors staggered from the building. Security at airports and train stations around Europe has been heightened in the wake of the attack.

Brussels is a batting-practice fastball right to Trump's wheelhouse. He is the only candidate who viscerally addresses the fear and loathing the masses feel towards the establishment in regards to the perpetual war on terror. Joe the Plumber and Brittany the Burger Flipper are more hip to how the game of global jihad works than the power elite and the mainstream press care to acknowledge. The masses might not be able to describe how Pakistan runs the Taliban with Saudi input or how Islamic State, Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra are main players in Syria thanks to the generous support of the Gulf shiekhdoms, but they know the United States and our European cousins are getting played. Trump, all bluster and braggadocio, says it has to stop, that we need to bar all Muslims from entering the country until we can address the problem, and people listen. People listen because they are tired of the never-ending, ever-expanding war on terror.

So expect Trump to benefit in the near term and every time there is a bombing or gun battle in a Western city.

The FiveThirtyEight chat susses out the real estate mogul's chances of locking up the GOP nomination after the primary season ends June 7. The long and short of it depends on how he does in California. A native of the Golden State myself, I think Trump will do quite well.

An interesting exchange in the FiveThirtyEight chat has to do with Trump's potency among blacks in traditionally Democratic enclaves:

dave: Trump seems to be benefiting a great deal from the fact that there are many places where neither Cruz nor Kasich has much natural appeal. For example, Trump has won a lot of delegates in African-American-majority congressional districts in places like St. Louis and Chicago where there aren’t many evangelicals, wealthy whites — or for that matter, Republicans period. So I see Trump winning a lot of delegates in minority-majority districts in places like California and New York, and that’s a big problem for #NeverTrump right now.

This was brought home to me by a clip on Democracy Now! of a black guy beating the shit out of a Hippie protester at a Trump rally in Tucson.

Hillary's overwhelming support among African Americans is due to her being a known, familiar figure. Well, black people feel like they know Trump too. As long the billionaire can keep the spotlight off the crackers who constitute the base of his support and keep it focused on a cartoon version of a bloodthirsty Muslim, he will win his fair share of African American votes.

What blacks and Bernie supporters need to come to grips with is that we will be consigned to the scrap heap by the end of spring. Lambert Strether lays it all out clearly. There will be no role for Bernie in the Hillary general election campaign and his supporters will not be catered to. The reasoning is well known to progressives and peaceniks. You got no place to go. Team Clinton will happily wave goodbye to all the Hippies and Punks who leave the Dem rez to vote for Jill Stein. The big-game hunt for Hillary is the mythical soccer mom ensconced in her exurb McMansion.

As Strether convincingly argues, Trump v. Clinton is going to be a horrendously negative, epically brutal, low turnout campaign. Hillary will pitch her message to moderate Republicans. By September Bernie Sanders will be a memory as distant as a Nader Super Rally in Y2K.

Bernie is not even mentioning Hillary, choosing instead to inveigh against Trump. He had an opportunity to score points when he was in Seattle over the weekend by mentioning that David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager who is part of Hillary's brain trust, is an Uber executive who spoke out against the company's drivers unionizing with the Teamsters. Top Dems now openly advocate union-busting knowing there will not be a peep from AFL-CIO headquarters. It is truly pathetic.

Bernie shit the bed last Tuesday by losing all five contests -- Missouri, Illinois, North Carolina, Florida and Ohio. He is running significantly behind in Arizona. The way I see it he has to win everything from here to California to prove he is something more than a progressive boutique candidate. Sanders has to beat Hillary in Arizona to take the narrative back.

Afghanistan at a Turning Point

Here is the Afghanistan blurb from this morning's "Situation Report" by Foreign Policy's Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley:

Echoing American generals who have run the war in Afghanistan for the past decade, leader of U.S. and NATO troops there, Gen. John Campbell, told a congressional panel Tuesday that the country “is at an inflection point.” If Washington pulls out too many troops by the end of this year, 2016 “is at risk of being no better, and possibly worse, than 2015,” which was the bloodiest year yet for Afghan security forces. The general -- expected to retire in the coming months once Lt. Gen. John "Mick" Nicholson comes to Kabul to take over -- praised the White House’s decision to keep U.S. troop strength at around 9,800 troops for much of this year, eventually falling to about 5,500 by 2017. "Ultimately, Afghanistan has not achieved an enduring level of security and stability that justifies a reduction in our support in 2016," Campbell said.

Last year the casualty rate sustained by the Afghan security forces was deemed unsustainable. According to Mujib Mashal's "Taliban Bombing Kills at Least 20 at Kabul Police Station":

. . . [C]asualties among Afghan soldiers and police officers had risen by almost a third in 2015, compared with a record casualty rate in 2014 that some officials then considered unsustainable.

***

Intense Taliban offensives this winter, including the string of bombings in Kabul, have Afghan and Western officials increasingly worried about the pressure on the Afghan security forces. 

Col. Michael T. Lawhorn, a spokesman for NATO and United States forces in Afghanistan, said the casualties of Afghan forces through 2015 were 28 percent higher than in the previous year. Colonel Lawhorn, who would not go into details about the new casualty report, said a difficult year for Afghan forces had long been expected because they were carrying responsibility for a “significantly increased operational tempo” last year, after the end of the NATO combat mission. 

An Afghan official briefed on the matter put the number of casualties last year at close to 16,000 soldiers and police officers, with more than 5,000 killed. Even those numbers seemed low, considering that 4,100 were killed in the first six months of 2015, and the fighting greatly intensified in the last six months of the year.

Oruzgan Province north of Kandahar is in trouble, as Mashal goes on to relate:

In the district of Deh Rawood in southern Oruzgan Province, where the police have long complained of a lack of equipment and ammunition while practically under siege, four security checkpoints were abandoned by the police and later burned down by the Taliban, according to Mohammad Karim Khadimzai, head of the Oruzgan provincial council. Around 30 police officers deserted their posts in Deh Rawood and arrived in Tirin Kot, the provincial capital.

In today's paper Mashal and Taimoor Shah report that a hero boy soldier was assassinated by the Taliban in front of his home in Tirin Kot ("Taliban Gun Down 10-Year-Old Militia Hero in Afghanistan").

Gen. Campbell appears to have told Congress the truth when he announced that 2016 is an "inflection point" for Afghanistan. If the Chinese can't put enough pressure on Pakistan to get substantive peace negotiations moving, it is hard to see how the U.S./NATO project in Afghanistan survives.

Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan: The Promise of Elections Will Not Bring Peace

There is little reason to hope that anything will come of the UN-approved peace plan for Syria announced last Friday. Just look at how poorly peace talks on Yemen have gone; and with Yemen you don't have nearly the number of large-state actors with their fingers in the mix as is the case with Syria. In Yemen, like in Syria, a significant problem is how to contain the efflorescence of Salafi jihadists who are supported by Saudi Arabia. Kareem Fahim and Saleed al-Batati report in "Yemen Peace Talks End With No End to Conflict" that

In recent days, anti-Houthi fighters have mounted a broad offensive across several northern provinces, and captured new territory, including a provincial capital. [What about the ceasefire?] The anti-Houthi forces are backed by a Saudi-led military coalition that has been conducting an aerial campaign against the rebels since March. Human rights groups say that bombing by the coalition is responsible for the majority of civilian deaths during the war. 

The Saudi-led coalition carried out airstrikes in Sana and other areas on Saturday and Sunday. And the Houthis, who have been making increasingly bold military incursions across the border into Saudi Arabia, have fired ballistic missiles at the Saudi-backed forces in the past few days, according to Yemeni military officials.

It appears that the Houthis are flying the white flag, but to no avail:

Nasser Bagazgooz, who was part of the Houthi delegation, asserted that his side had made “big” concessions, including agreeing to withdraw Houthi forces from cities and from government institutions, and to hand over weapons.

The Houthis had asked for the formation of a new government “from across the political spectrum,” and elections within a year, he added.

The Houthis are basically mirroring the UN-outlined peace process for Syria. But the Saudis don't seem to find this acceptable, which should tell us how smoothly things will go in January.

Interestingly, elections are also on the mind of a nascent opposition movement within the quisling Afghan government. But first a few words on the dire military predicament in Afghanistan from this morning's "Situation Report" by Foreign Policy's Paul McLeary:

Taliban keeps pushing. NATO’s combat mission in Afghanistan may have ended last December, but the deaths of six U.S. soldiers near Bagram airbase on Monday, and the rushed deployments of U.S. and British forces to Helmand province to hold back a resurgent Taliban, tell a very different story. 

The loss of six soldiers in one strike is the largest battlefield loss for the U.S. in Afghanistan in well over a year, and more than doubles American combat fatalities there in 2015, which stood at four before Monday.

Renewed Taliban offensives across the country call into question the effectiveness of the Afghan army, which continues to struggle despite years of training and billions spent on equipping the force. And now, American commandos are back in the fight in the southern province of Helmand to backstop Afghan forces, who are in danger of losing control of the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah and the key town of Sangin, FP’s Paul McLeary reports.

British troops have also been sent to Helmand, though London insists they are only acting in an advisory role. It’s worth remembering that Sangin resonates deeply with the British public, “as more than 100 of their 456 fatalities in Afghanistan since the start of the war in 2001 took place in the district,” the AP notes.

Mujib Mashal reported in yesterday's paper, "Afghan Government Faces New Set of Rivals," that allies of former president Hamid Karzai are demanding that the Ghani-Abdullah government honor pledges to hold elections within nine months. There is a hardcore segment of this opposition who want a loya jirga convened immediately and a caretaker government put in place:

It was unlikely that the members of the opposition council would have much popular support, because many of them had controversial pasts, Mr. Safi said. [Wadir Safi, a lecturer of political science at Kabul University.] But the government’s abysmal record has given many of them hope that they can exercise some power anyway, he added.

“The problem is also that the government hasn’t delivered at all — the two men came together in an illegal agreement, they have talked a lot and delivered nothing, and they are trying to extend that,” Mr. Safi said.

Mr. Ghani’s government came to power through a power-sharing agreement brokered by Secretary of State John Kerry after an election stalemate last year threatened to throw the country into a civil war. The agreement’s two-year deadline expires next September, and it calls for a thorough overhaul of the election process, the holding of parliamentary and district elections, and a national assembly of elders to amend the Constitution and formalize Mr. Abdullah’s position as a prime minister.

But 15 months after coming to power, the government has struggled with even the most basic steps needed for holding the elections, including an agreement on the makeup of the commission to oversee the vote. A harsh winter, and a Taliban offensive that is expected to intensify in the spring, makes their task of holding the elections as scheduled even more difficult.

In all three battle zones -- Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan -- elections will not bring peace. In not one of the three countries does the U.S. and its Saudi ally want truly free and fair elections. The U.S. doesn't have free and fair elections in the homeland, and neither do the Saudis. So the wars will continue.

The "Moderate" Counterfeit: Syria and the U.S.

I have noticed an interesting parallel: The use of the term "moderate" in glaringly different contexts but for the same basic purpose, to mock up support where there really isn't any to speak of. Call it the "moderate" counterfeit.

In the first context, the World War in Syria, the term "moderate" anchors the main fiction of U.S. foreign policy there, that Syria is convulsed by a civil war in which a bloodthirsty dictator, Bashar al-Assad, propped up by authoritarian allies in Iran and Russia, slaughters a "moderate" civil opposition who is looking to a benevolent Uncle Sam for support. That is the cover story. What is really going on is that Syria is being invaded by foreign jihadist mercenaries, bankrolled by the Arab states of the Persian Gulf.

Despite spending half a billion dollars to form a "moderate" fighting force to combat ISIS in northern Syria, the Pentagon came up empty. You would think that this would spur a Congressional investigation or two and possible some heads would roll. But actually nothing of the sort will happen; in fact, the Pentagon is looking for a $100-million increase in the program in next year's budget. According to this morning's "Foreign Policy - Situation Report" by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley,

Missiles for all my friends. Not all train and equip programs are created equal. While the effort by U.S. Special Forces to train a Syrian force of about 5,000 “moderate” fighters by the end of this year has flamed out, the Washington Post takes a look at the other, more successful U.S. train and equip program in Syria -- the CIA's supply of TOW missiles to rebels.

The missiles have been so successful on the battlefield that the rebels have taken to calling it the “Assad Tamer.” The program has been going on for several years, and during the recent Russian-backed offensive by Syrian forces, rebels have been posting videos of the missiles taking out Syrian tanks and armored vehicles. While a significant capability, the Raytheon-made missiles -- coming mostly from the 13,000 purchased by the Saudi government in 2013 -- have so far been unable to significantly change the situation on the ground, as Syrian forces continue to push rebels out of their positions in Idlib, Hama, and Latakia provinces.

Not dead, just less oversight! The Pentagon’s scuttled training program may be gone, but the effort lives on. Despite insisting for months that every single Syrian fighter needed to be vetted by U.S. forces before being issued weapons, White House and Pentagon officials on Friday said that actually, the opposite is true. On a call with reporters, Christine Wormuth, the Pentagon’s undersecretary of defense for policy, said only the leaders of various trusted rebel groups will be vetted, and they’ll be trusted to pass out U.S.-supplied weapons and supplies to their troops as they see fit. “We have been working with these groups for months,” she said, and the United States will now “build on that and work with groups on the ground who are already fighting ISIL and provide them some equipment.” She wouldn’t comment on the kinds of equipment specifically, other than to say it will not include “higher-end” weapons like anti-tank rockets and ground-to-air missiles.

The original program may be dead, but like all good Pentagon initiatives, the funding stream lives on. The Pentagon has asked for $600 million to fund it in the 2016 budget, and Capitol Hill appears willing to go along, despite Republican and Democratic lawmakers having recently called the training effort “a joke,” a “total failure,” and “a bigger disaster than I could have ever imagined.”

Hard to believe. But there it is. The fiction of a vibrant "moderate" opposition and the necessity of a well-funded program in the Pentagon to support it is too important for something as disposable as the truth.

Another context where "moderate" is used to anchor an Oz-like fictitious social construct is in the 2016 presidential race. "Moderates" are the wellspring of the "mainstream" candidacies of Jeb Bush and Hillary. ("Moderates" written without the quote marks -- apparently the fiction of moderates on the battlefield in Syria can be designated in quotation as an Obama administration contrivance, but moderates in the U.S. electorate much be vouchsafed as legitimate; hence, no quote marks.)

To get a sense of how the term "moderate" is used in the context of the 2016 presidential primary contest, let us turn to the Gray Lady's principal electoral tea-leaves reader, Nate Cohn ("Why Marco Rubio’s Chances Are Rising"):

A lot has changed since April, when Marco Rubio announced his presidential bid. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin was the top candidate of mainstream conservative activists and donors. Jeb Bush seemed like a fund-raising juggernaut with natural appeal to the party’s moderate voters, who play an underrated role in the Republican primary process. Mr. Rubio, a broadly appealing candidate but the top choice of few, looked boxed out.

Today, Mr. Rubio isn’t blocked. Instead, he has a big opening. 

Mr. Walker dropped out of the race, and Mr. Bush does not look nearly as strong as it seemed he might. Mr. Bush hasn’t won many endorsements, he isn’t faring well in the polls, and his impressive fund-raising reflects a narrow base of strong support from wealthy super PAC donors, not wide support by party elites.

As Cohn lines out, Bush's oasis of mass moderate support turned out to be a mirage. This doesn't stop Cohn from pressing on to claim an opportunity for the ridiculous Rubio to tap the same "oasis" of "moderate" support.

The same can be said for Cohn's recent think-piece ("Joe Biden: No Money, Weak Polls, but Still Clinton’s Toughest Rival") where he buttresses Hillary's front-runner status, with, yes, you guessed it, her appeal to "moderate" voters:

Among nonwhite voters, [Hillary] leads Mr. Sanders in a one-on-one contest by a huge margin of 71 percent to 16 percent. 

Similarly, she leads among moderate voters by a margin of 63 to 23 points. The race is closer among whites and liberals, but she still takes a slight lead among both groups in a head-to-head contest with Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Sanders said earlier this year that he thought he had a chance to break into Mrs. Clinton’s coalition by winning support from working-class voters. Perhaps he can. But his opponent is a candidate with universal name recognition, tremendous backing from party elites and considerable financial and organizational resources. These factors make her far less vulnerable than other candidates to perceptions of momentum — in which voters who don’t follow the campaign very closely can flock to someone who seems to be gaining.

At the end of the quote, the underlined portion, you get the real definition of "moderate" in the U.S. electoral system -- someone who is basically ignorant and who will vote for the candidate with the greatest name recognition and the largest number of commercials on television.

While in years past -- when there was at least a modicum of hope in the future -- this would be plenty to win an election, now, things are different. Look at Jeb Bush. There are few "moderates" these days.