In bunkers now held by ISIS militants, and sometimes in streets emptied by bomb threats, scores of American service members secretly helped find and dispose of Saddam Hussein's aging chemical weapons. Now stateside, many troops are sick with mystery ailments the military has at times tried to conceal.

The Guardian has a must-read long essay by Jonathan Powell, one of the negotiators of the 1997 Northern Ireland peace deal, on "how to talk to terrorists." It will make you reconsider everything you know about "us" and "them." And it likely foretells how the latest us-them conflict will turn out.