Iraq Said to Seek U.S. Strikes on Militants

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/12/world/middleeast/iraq-asked-us-for-airstri
kes-on-militants-officials-say.html?_r=0

Here we go again...Don't forget, it's all Bush's fault.

WASHINGTON - As the threat from Sunni militants in western Iraq escalated
last month, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki secretly asked the Obama
administration to consider carrying out airstrikes against extremist staging
areas, according to Iraqi and American officials.

But Iraq's appeals for military assistance have so far been rebuffed by the
White House, which has been reluctant to open a new chapter in a conflict
that President Obama has insisted was over when the United States withdrew
the last of its forces from Iraq in 2011.

The swift capture of Mosul by militants aligned with the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria has underscored how the conflicts in Syria and Iraq have
converged into one widening regional insurgency with fighters coursing back
and forth through the porous border between the two countries. But it has
also cast a spotlight on the limits the White House has imposed on the use
of American power in an increasingly violent and volatile region.

By Epictetus