Good day my friends….please take a seat and we will get right with it……

Item 1–US has stopped paying rebels in Northern Syria…….

“Vetted, moderate” rebels in northern Syria are joining al-Qaeda left and right these days, according to commanders familiar with the situation, as the US has suddenly and without explanation stopped paying them salaries.

Which reflects the nature of a lot of the “moderate” rebellion, that they are there to collect US paychecks and, in their absence, they’re for sale to the highest bidders, which will probably be al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel admitted today that he was pressed by Iraqi Premier Hayder Abadi on shipments of heavy weapons as well as escalations of airstrikes.

he declined any comment on what, if anything, he’d agreed to provide Abadi, but did say that US firepower would never be enough to solve all of Iraq’s problems, noting it didn’t work during the last war, and won’t work during this one.

Throughout the Syrian War, the US has claimed massive death tolls among leaders of the “Khorasan” faction of al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front. In October, officials conceded the early attacks failed, and almost immediately thereafter claimed David Drungeon, a top French “bomb maker,” was killed in a drone strike.

The story of Drungeon’s suddenly becoming a “top bomb maker” was extremely dubious, but officials figured he was killed, and slain al-Qaeda members have a way of being posthumously promoted by the US.

Only Drungeon isn’t dead, officials are now admitting. They think he was “seriously injured” but survived the drone strike, and he is believed to have since recovered.

Drungeon’s death was of particular PR value to Western officials as a convert to Islam who was slain overseas. His survival serves as further embarrassment to a US war in Syria which has gone poorly from the start.