The Gulp.

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ADDED: 10 minutes after putting up this post, quite by chance, I ran across this old post of mine, "Bolus":

Some readers enjoyed my use of the word "bolus" 2 posts down. (A "feminist blog is committed to chewing things into a bolus of feminism....  When the evidence is flimsy, lubricate the bolus with the notion of the subtlety of the oppression. It might be swallowable.") That's not a word that would have come naturally to me if I hadn't read Mary Roach's cool book "Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal," so let me provide you with a reading:

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"Calling the Islamic State an 'evil terrorist death cult,' Mr. Cameron defended the decision to target Mr. Emwazi..."

"'... who was born in Kuwait and is a naturalized British citizen, as 'an act of self-defense' and 'the right thing to do.' We have been working, with the United States, literally around the clock to track him down... This was a combined effort, and the contribution of both our countries was essential. Emwazi is a barbaric murderer.... He was ISIL’s lead executioner, and let us never forget that he killed many, many Muslims, too."

Mr. Cameron = British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Mr. Emwazi = Mohammed Emwazi, AKA Jihadi John.

A Reaper drone armed with Hellfire missiles attacked a car and, as an anonymous U.S. military official put it: "We think we got him."

AND: "Kurdish and Yazidi fighters retook Sinjar on Friday morning, on the second day of a major offensive to reclaim this city in northern Iraq, which has been under the brutal domination of the Islamic State for more than 15 months.... Members of the Yazidi religious minority, which faced rape, enslavement and death in large numbers after the Islamic State overran Sinjar in August 2014, took part in the fight."

"We love the land, but the land doesn’t love us."

Christians in Iraq.

More than a year after IS swept across northern Iraq, capturing the historic heartland of Iraq’s Assyrian Christians and driving out more than 100,000, many of the displaced say they no longer see a future for Christians here. Thousands have already emigrated, and many others are planning or hoping to follow....

Trump seems to say we'd be better off with Saddam Hussein and Gaddafy still in power — and a stronger Assad.

On "Meet the Press" today. Watch the clip at the link. The text is going to look garbled, which is why I'm saying "seems":

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, when asked if he believes the Middle East would be better today if Moammar Gadhafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq were still in power, responded, "It's not even a contest."

He related the situations in both of those countries with what is currently happening in Syria and seemed to endorse a stronger President Bashar Assad, even while admitting that he is "probably a bad guy."

"You can make the case, if you look at Libya, look at what we did there — it's a mess — if you look at Saddam Hussein with Iraq, look what we did there — it's a mess — it's [Syria] going to be same thing," the real estate mogul said.

The real estate mogul said!