Editorial apologies: occasionally I have to post but I don’t have time to proof and edit. This is such a time. It’s days after I put this together and well past midnight here. The thoughts go out now; typo or no.

In the last three days, more news came out of Iraq. ISIL has taken the border crossings between “Iraq” and Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia. What was lost in the cross-fire was what has happened with Kurdistan. They control the border crossings into Northern Iraq —including those into Syria. They’ve moved south to take cities they were disputing with Baghdad as well as to secure territory. They know control, based on what I’ve seen, an area fifty to one-hundred percent larger than they used to. ISIL controls much of the territory west of Baghdad. And Baghdad controls a wedge between Kurdistan, ISIL and Iran. The partition of Iraq continues.

Much of the media calls them ISIS. At one level, they’re just one faction in a Suni coallition that’s fed up with Baghdad’s Shia exclusivity. They’re shut out. Malikhi is ensuring his people are no longer oppressed by arresting and excluding everyone else. And he’s opened a huge door for ISIS, a group that even Al Queda thinks is too extreme. But, that ISIS acronym is not a good translation. If I read it correctly, the Arabic is not the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria but the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is not Syria. It is a swath of territory that runs down into, and covers much of, Israel. So far, they’ve played this in Lebanon. What’s to be seen is how they play this in the portion of the Levant known as Israel.