Consecutive reports in news broadcasts set new standards of doublethink by presenting the battles underway in each city as diametrically opposite, when in fact they're the same. Both are crucial sites for the defeat of illegally armed insurgents. 

Aleppo and Mosul, each located far north in neighboring Arab countries, are the second major cities after their respective capitals of Damascus and Baghdad. Both were important industrial hubs before being seized by internationally blacklisted terror groups.

Islamic State (IS or Daesh) grabbed Mosul in 2014 from where it declared a Wahhabi caliphate encompassing Iraq and Syria. Whereas Aleppo has been under siege since 2012 from the ideologically-related terror group known as Jabhat al Nusra (renamed Jabhat al Fatah al Sham).

While Russia-backed Syrian army forces have been waging an offensive to wrest control of eastern Aleppo for several months now, this week US-backed Iraqi military launched a campaign to retake Mosul.

Here's where the Western narrative becomes convoluted with contradictions. On Mosul, the situation is presented as a positive liberation of a city by sovereign Iraqi forces from the grip of terrorists. But in the case of Aleppo, Western media refer to besieging militants using the softer term "rebels", with the connotation of legitimacy. Even though these "rebels"are known to be dominated by the same al Qaeda-type terrorists. 

US air strikes are supporting advancing Iraqi military on the ground as they penetrate Mosul. The involvement of US air power is generally reported as an unquestioningly good thing in support of a national army endeavoring to recapture a key part of its territory and liberate civilians from a reign of terror. 

Meanwhile, in Aleppo, Russian air strikes in support of a national army trying to recapture a key part of its territory and liberate civilians from a reign of terror are reported as "barbarous war crimes".