there was no moderate middle, because the moderate middle are made up of shopkeepers, not soldiers.100

Admitting that the jihadists had been armed by America’s allies, Biden went on to say that America’s “allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria.” Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, he explained, had “poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.” The result, Biden added, was that “the people who were being supplied were Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and the extremist elements of jihadis coming from other parts of the world.” Biden thereby contradicted the Obama administration’s public posture, according to which, in Secretary Kerry’s words, armed “legitimate opposition groups” exist separately from Al Qaeda’s Nusra Front.101 (Gareth Porter called this “Obama’s ‘Moderate’ Syrian Deception.”102)

The administration’s claim, that the Free Syrian Army (FSA) consisted of non-terrorist rebels, was contradicted by many facts.
Iraq claims airstrikes on Thursday in Syria killed 36 Islamic State militants.