In his column in the Washington Post summarizing how U. S. policy has failed in Syria, David Ignatius remarks:

In the annals of covert warfare, the CIA’s support for the Syrian opposition deserves a special, dark chapter. The effort began late — nearly two years into the war — after extremists had already begun to dominate the fight against President Bashar al-Assad. It was a hodgepodge of regional states and their pet fighters — nominally coordinated from operations centers in Jordan and Turkey but in reality controlled by more than 80 local militias whose commanders were often corrupt and proto-jihadists themselves.

The CIA and its partners were never willing to give the opposition the weapons — especially the shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles — that could have won the battle. The agency did provide anti-tank weapons that were potent enough that Assad was rocked in the summer of 2015, and analysts began to worry about “catastrophic success,” with the regime collapsing and jihadists filling a power vacuum in Damascus. Soon after that, Russia intervened.

The CIA’s biggest problem was that its allies couldn’t stop the dominance of al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra. The “vetted” opposition groups might pretend otherwise, but they were fighting alongside Jabhat al-Nusra, which rebranded itself this year as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham. The extremists attracted the other opposition groups for a simple reason: Their fighters were the most willing to die for the cause.

U. S. policy in the conflict has been to oppose the Assad regime and support the rebels against him with money, equipment, training, and U. S. advisors.

What should U. S. policy with respect to Syria have been?

1. Butt out.
2. Publicly, butt out. Privately, discourage our allies in the region from helping the rebels and maintain negative reciprocity with the Russians.
3. Support the Assad regime against the rebels.
4. U. S. policy in the Syrian conflict has been perfect in every way.
5. Do everything we’ve done plus establish a “no-fly” zone.
6. Do more of everything we’ve done.
7. Do more of everything we’ve done plus establish a “no-fly” zone.
8. Full scale direct military intervention.

I am inclined to (B) with (A) my second preference and (C) a distant third. I believe that Mr. Ignatius’s preference was (G). Or maybe (H).

The mechanics of the meetings of the members of the Electoral College aren’t spelled out in the Constitution but in Chapter 1 of Title 3, United States Code:

§ 7. The electors of President and Vice President of each State shall meet and give their votes on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December next following their appointment at such place in each State as the legislature of such State shall direct.

For those of you who have been playing at home, tomorrow is the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December and where they meet depends on your state’s laws. In Illinois that’s governed by 10 ILCS 5/21-4:

Sec. 21-4. Presidential electors; meeting; allowance. The electors, elected under this Article, shall meet at the office of the Secretary of State in a room to be designated by the Secretary in the Capitol at Springfield in this State, at the time appointed by the laws of the United States at the hour of ten o’clock in the forenoon of that day, and give their votes for President and for Vice-President of the United States, in the manner provided in this Article, and perform such duties as are or may be required by law.

Typically, the voting of the electors is pretty quotidian. Like everything else in this highly contentious presidential cycle tomorrow’s proceedings may not be, at least in some states. Here in Illinois, of course, all of our electors will vote for Hillary Clinton.

At Outside the Beltway Steven L. Taylor has helpfully outlined the possible scenarios that might unfold:

1. The electors act as messengers, delivering to their state capitals the electoral votes corresponding to the candidate who won the given state (as per the above, with 306 going to Trump and 232 to Clinton).
2. The same as the above, but with a handful of faithless electors who wish to make a political point, but with nowhere close to enough to threaten the 270 Trump needs to win.
3. Thirty-seven, or more, electors could defect from Trump to vote for neither Clinton nor Trump, but instead for Candidate X (or splitting the 37 votes for X, Y, Z, etc.). This would throw the election to the House of Representatives (with the top three vote-getters as the choices for the chamber).
4. Thirty-seven Trump electors could vote for Clinton, tying the contest at 269-269, which would throw the election to the House of Representatives.
5. Thirty-eight, or more, Trump electors could defect to Clinton. If she could hold her 232 in that case she would have the 270 needed to be elected president.
6. Two-hundred and seventy electors defect and choose Candidate X.

“Faithless elector” is the term applied to electors who vote for a candidate other than as prescribed under state law. The largest number of faithless electors in any presidential cycle was in 1872 when all 63 Democratic electors voted for a candidate other than the Democratic candidate. That candidate, Horace Greeley, had been inconsiderate enough to die shortly after the election.

Entire state delegations, e.g. Pennsylvania’s in 1832, have defected, but all in all faithless electors have been rare.

Of the scenarios outlined by Dr. Taylor above, I think that #2 is by far the most likely which means that the Electoral College will have elected Donald Trump to the presidency. In my estimation a distant second most likely is #3 in which case anything goes.

Don’t be lulled into believing that the controversy will end with the voting of the electors. I feel confident in predicting that the next four years will be as filled with controversy as any presidential term in American history.

I am a bit disappointed. Back in the first week of October I sent around 50 home movies, several hundred slides, some dating from the 1930s, and one videotape out for digitization. I had hoped I would have received them by now.

The original length of time the process was supposed to have taken was eight weeks. That would have meant I would have had them in hand around the first week of December. They’re likely to be at least three weeks late.

The lesson here is plan ahead. Way ahead.

At The Week Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry makes his case in favor of Rex Tillerson for Secretary of State:

But I see Tillerson as an excellent, very inspired pick. Let me explain.

The objections come down to mainly two things: Tillerson’s qualifications, and his seemingly friendly ties to Vladimir Putin, who (now infamously) awarded Tillerson Russia’s Order of Friendship. Let’s take those gripes one by one.

Dealing with governments is an integral part of running a major oil company. Governments play key roles in any energy deals, and dealing with those governments is part of the job. An in-depth feature by Politico’s Hounshell describes Tillerson’s rise through the ranks at ExxonMobil as driven at least in part by his skill — and toughness — in dealing with governments, including trouble spot governments.

In other words, there’s no question that Tillerson is intimately familiar with the geopolitics, politics, and characters involved in many of the trouble spots that are key for American policy, including places like Russia, Central Asia, the Middle East, West Africa, and Venezuela. Before being assigned to Russia, Tillerson spent three weeks in the Library of Congress reading books about Russian history and politics. He’s no dummy.

Just because he didn’t take part in international negotiations and geostrategic thinking as a State Department diplomat or member of a Senate committee doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to do those things; in fact, he has done them throughout his career, and pretty successfully as far as we can tell. That makes him exceptionally qualified.

I don’t have strong feelings one way or another about this appointment. As I repeatedly said about President Obama’s cabinet appointments, I think that the president deserves substantial deference when it comes to picking his own team.

Additionally, I’m not sure I can distinguish among principled opposition, partisan opposition, just plain opposition, and turf war. I sense some of each in what I’ve read on Mr. Tillerson’s appointment.

The graphic above illustrates the history of attempts at modernizing, streamlining, and evading the standard military procurement system over the period of the last 20 years. It comes from this post at the Center for a New American Security proposing ways of exploiting our technological superiority for strategic advantage which I encourage you to read.

A major problem is that really harnessing modern technology means decentralizing and that will be opposed bitterly by people whose livelihoods and futures depend on centralization.

The United States has subsidized sugar for 82 years. Like most federal subsidies our programs subsidize producers rather than consumers—the specific objective of the programs have been to raise sugar prices and it’s been effective. Americans pay $300 million per year to support the program. For more information on U. S. sugar subsidies see here.

Our sugar subsidies have had a number of consequences. For example, they have encouraged the development of the Everglades for sugar production with serious environmental consequences. They have made artificial sweeteners and corn syrup more competitive with sugar than would otherwise have been the case and there is some evidence that artificial sweeteners and high fructose corn syrup actually cause cravings for sweets. Ironically, recent studies have found that artificial sweeteners, specifically aspartame, may be counter-productive in weight loss.

The case for maintaining the sugar subsidies is quite weak. But they have new allies—people who want to raise the price of sugar for health reasons. The Washington Post remarks:

Soda taxes have become a weapon of choice among public-health advocates: In the past year alone, six U.S. cities and counties have begun targeting sugar intake by taxing sugary beverages.

But while there’s evidence that these measures reduce soda consumption, economists say there is a very simple way to more effectively reduce sugar and sweetener intake. In a nutshell, don’t tax the soda — tax the sugar it contains.

According to a new research report by the Urban Institute, such an approach would reduce both sugar consumption and consumer burden more than the volume taxes — which tax beverages by the fluid ounce — that are favored by cities and counties across the United States. What’s more, they might also encourage manufacturers to reformulate some high-sugar beverages.

“The whole point is this:” said Donald Marron, who directs economic policy initiatives at the Urban Institute. “If you’re going to have taxes on soda, and if those taxes are motivated by sugar, then the tax should be on the amount of sugar.”

This is a wonderful example of conflicting objectives in public policies. My instinct is that the sugar subsidies should be abolished. But that would have the effect of lowering the prices of sugar and products that contain sugar.

If you’re going to tax sugar, again my instinct is that you shouldn’t favor fructose over sucrose or any other sweetener, natural or artificial. But that will rally considerably more opposition to enacting the tax.

And, of course, a tax on sweeteners would hurt consumers, intentionally so. It’s the mechanism that makes them an effective means of reducing consumption.

That’s why there’s a quandary about sugar.

CBS News is reporting that American intelligence officials have said that it is likely that Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin was directly involved in the hacking of DNC emails:

American intelligence officials say they are convinced that Russian hacking of our presidential election was approved by President Vladimir Putin. Sources confirm to CBS News they believe Putin was aware of attacks that began in July of last year.

An official investigation is still going on. But this is the first time the hacking that plagued the Democratic National Committee until Election Day has been linked to Putin, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Pegues.

The hacks were so widespread and sustained over such a long period of time that U.S. Intelligence sources say it could not have been carried out without the knowledge of senior levels of the Kremlin. CBS News has learned that investigators believe the initial cyberattack involved thousands of malicious emails aimed at the U.S. government, military and political organizations.

It is unclear whether this represents new information or is a more forceful restating of information previously disclosed.

At The Intercept Sam Biddle remarks:

The gist of the Case Against Russia goes like this: The person or people who infiltrated the DNC’s email system and the account of John Podesta left behind clues of varying technical specificity indicating they have some connection to Russia, or at least speak Russian. Guccifer 2.0, the entity that originally distributed hacked materials from the Democratic party, is a deeply suspicious figure who has made statements and decisions that indicate some Russian connection. The website DCLeaks, which began publishing a great number of DNC emails, has some apparent ties to Guccifer and possibly Russia. And then there’s Wikileaks, which after a long, sad slide into paranoia, conspiracy theorizing, and general internet toxicity, has made no attempt to mask its affection for Vladimir Putin and its crazed contempt for Hillary Clinton. (Julian Assange has been stuck indoors for a very, very long time.) If you look at all of this and sort of squint, it looks quite strong indeed, an insurmountable heap of circumstantial evidence too great in volume to dismiss as just circumstantial or mere coincidence.

But look more closely at the above and you can’t help but notice all of the qualifying words: Possibly, appears, connects, indicates. It’s impossible (or at least dishonest) to present the evidence for Russian responsibility for hacking the Democrats without using language like this. The question, then, is this: Do we want to make major foreign policy decisions with a belligerent nuclear power based on suggestions alone, no matter how strong?

I continue to believe that we should have a bipartisan commission investigating this.

Unless you set out and look for it you’ll be hard put to see much in the way of news about either the campaigns to re-take Aleppo or Mosul from their DAESH captors. In the instance of Aleppo, the city appears to have been re-taken. The Washington Post reports:

Late Tuesday, Russia announced that the Syrian government was in full control of all of Aleppo, though that could not be independently confirmed.

The deal would end the intense battles and bloodshed that have wracked Aleppo. Among the dead are at least 82 civilians killed by Syrian soldiers and allied Shiite militias from Iraq and backed by Iran, according to U.N. reports.

It would also signal an end for rebel fighters clinging to their last footholds in the strategic city after being pushed back by overwhelming firepower.

There are plenty of questions remaining as in what has become of the residents of Aleppo? There’s a basic conflict between Western reports of hundreds of thousands of people under siege and the few dribs and drabs that we heard about.

There have been some reports from rebel sources of Syrian Army reprisals and brutal attacks on civilians. There are also reports from Russian sources of residents of Aleppo rejoicing at their liberation. In either case what would you expect them to say? We’ll need to wait a while for more independent judgments.

Meanwhile, there’s concern that the Mosul dam could be captured and used as a weapon of war. The Sun reports:

Weakening foundations are threatening to burst open the dam which was built by Saddam Hussein more than 30 years ago,

Should this happen a 11 trillion litres wall of water will surge into densely populated areas.

The facility is under tight guard amid concern ISIS jihadis could capture and sabotage it.

US army engineers fear a sudden collapse could flood Mosul, Iraq’s second biggest story, under 60 feet of water.

Iraqi government forces – backed by US air force and the RAF – are currently battling to expel ISIS from the city.

But if the dam breaks a fierce surge of water could do the job for them.

The Iraqi capital, Baghdad, could also be left 15ft under water.

At this point those are just conjectures. The International Business Times reports that the Iraqi government may already be declaring victory, possibly prematurely:

Iraq is bracing itself for a new phase of warfare as the Islamic State (Isis) loses its grip on Mosul and targets Iraqi cities and civilians in a bloody campaign of deadly suicide attacks.

Acting Interior Minister Ageela al-Khazali told IBTimes UK that while Iraq looked close to collapse in the summer of 2014 – when IS first seized Mosul – Iraqi forces had all but triumphed over the terrorist group on the battlefield.

But the minister added the government of Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi now had to work to combat the next phase of the IS threat.

In Mosul, Khazali said the the defence and intelligence services were expecting sporadic gunfights to erupt after the city, Iraq’s second largest, had been liberated.

“In the future we are expect street wars and street fighting in Mosul,” he said.

There have also been what to me appear to be rather bizarre reports of DAESH fighters from Mosul going to Syria to bolster the resistance there:

One doesn’t need to be a genius to guess why the US-led coalition, which has very powerful surveillance tools, failed to pick up the 4,000 ISIS jihadists making their way to Palmyra, says Peter Ford, the former UK ambassador to Syria.

Thousands of ISIS fighters are trying to recapture the ancient city of Palmyra which was liberated by Russian and Syrian forces in March. Syrian troops have started a major counter-offensive.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the Syrian army with Russian air support managed to repel several attacks on Palmyra, killing up to 300 jihadists.

Here’s the key quote:

PF: There has been a trickle over an extended period, and there has also been a flow from Raqqa itself. ISIS was preparing a bolt hole for the eventuality that they will lose Raqqa and they will transfer their capital to Palmyra. It may be in the back of their minds. And the American strategy plays into this. We can forecast a scenario where Mosul is on the verge of falling to the Iraqi US-backed forces, and safe passage is arranged for ISIS fighters. Where would they go? Of course, they will be dumped on Syria – the ideal outcome from the Obama administration point of view.

I certainly hope that isn’t the case. The objective should be defeating DAESH rather than letting it become somebody else’s problem.

The map of at the top of this post is from South Front. I can’t vouch for its veracity.

This report from Reuters underscores the points I’ve been making:

The overseers of the U.S. intelligence community have not embraced a CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, three American officials said on Monday.

While the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) does not dispute the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations, it has not endorsed their assessment because of a lack of conclusive evidence that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, said the officials, who declined to be named.

which is why I think the next step in the process should be a bipartisan commission.

More from the article:

The CIA conclusion was a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked,” one of the three officials said on Monday.

“(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” the official added.

Thin reed, weak tea, whatever.