David Ignatius
David Ignatius, Washington Post
David Ignatius, a CIA and Pentagon mouthpiece writing at Jeff Bezos's blog, stenographs the U.S. claims about yesterday's massacre against local pro-government forces in Deir Ezzor.

There is a funny contradiction in his tale.

In a first step Ignatius must justify the U.S. presence and action in the area. He does so by pointing to "remnants" of the Islamic State
The rout ended at about 5:30 a.m. When we arrived about seven hours later, the Kurdish commander was still flush with victory. He took us on a tour later of the SDF's front-line positions against scattered Islamic State remnants east of Shaddadi.
See, there is ISIS and that's why the U.S. and the Kurds are there.

But in the next step Ignatius must deny the Russian justification for its presence in Syria and he must reject the legitimacy of action by Syrian government forces. He does so by denying any ISIS presence. The U.S., he writes, has eliminated them all:
The Russian Defense Ministry issued a lame statement Thursday, claiming that the attackers were chasing Islamic State fighters. That's nonsense, as the Russians surely knew. There are no Islamic State fighters left in that area, thanks to the U.S.-led coalition.
Shaddadi is just a short ride from where the incident happened. It is the same operational area. So ISIS is there when the U.S. needs it for its argument, but has completely vanished when the other side makes claims about attacking it.

Contradictions like the above make it difficult to sell such propaganda to anyone but the most dull people. Ignatius is highly paid. His sponsors should look for better value for their money.