The Common Ills: Jonah and the Whale and the war that never ends

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Jonah and the Whale and the war that never ends

Recently there’s been a massive uproar on gun control in America, why not the same uproar on America bombing other countries!!!
#Syria #SaveGhouta #Iraq #Afghanistan #Yemen

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Exactly.

There's a huge refusal in the United States to take an honest look in the mirror.

In Iraq, the war drags on with the Islamic State killing 2 police officers in Khabbaz oil field and kidnapping five people near Shirqat.

On the topic of ISIS, they plundered a Mosul tomb in 2015. Now archaeologists have made discoveries at the site. Harry Pettit (DAILY MAIL) reports:

ISIS' destruction of the biblical tomb of Jonah has revealed a once opulent palace and inscriptions detailing the life of an Assyrian King.
Seven clay tablets, found in a palace hidden under the Tomb of Jonah in the northern city of Mosul, describe the rule of a king named Esarhaddon.
The inscriptions describe Esarhaddon as 'king of the world', and claim he rebuilt the ancient cities of Babylon and Esagil during his reign.
They also lay out the man's family history, giving scientists fresh insight into the ancient royal bloodline of Assyria.
The tablets were found in four tunnels dug by ISIS looters looking for Assyrian treasure beneath the Tomb of Jonah, a shrine sacred to both Christians and Muslims.
The site was blown up by the terror group during its occupation of Mosul from June 2014 until January 2017, when the city was retaken by Iraqi forces.
Archaeologists picking through ancient rubble left behind by the group found a previously undiscovered palace containing white marble murals of bulls, stone statues of demi-goddesses and seven marble inscriptions.

A more recent discovery?

That the US has no plan to end the Iraq War.

Oliver Knox (YAHOO NEWS) reports:

President Trump has all the legal authority he needs to keep U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq indefinitely, the Pentagon and State Department said in a pair of letters released on Thursday. The letters also warned that the United States reserves the right to take military action to defend its anti-ISIS allies in Syria, potentially setting the stage for new clashes with regime forces and their Russian partners.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., to whom the letters were addressed, sharply criticized the administration’s reasoning and said in a statement that Trump risks “acting like a king by unilaterally starting a war.”
Borrowing arguments first advanced by the Obama administration, the Pentagon and State Department argued that the undeclared war on ISIS — and the presence of some 2,000 U.S. troops in Syria and 5,200 more in Iraq — is legal under the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) and the 2002 AUMF that set the stage for the invasion of Iraq. In late January, the Trump administration signaled that it would not seek a new vote to authorize the mission in Syria.

That part about the argument first being advanced by Barack? Somehow Joe Gould (DEFENSE NEWS) misses that part of the story.

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