An American man suspected of fighting with Islamic State militants operating in Iraq and Syria has been killed in the region, a U.S. security official said on Monday.
President Barack Obama on Tuesday vowed to go after the Islamic State killers of American journalist James Foley and said rooting out the militant group in Iraq and Syria will not be easy.
One of the crazy things about following the Middle East is trying to keep track of all the bad guys. Remember when Iran was the big bad Islamic wolf? Or al-Qaida? Or Hezbollah? Or the Muslim Brotherhood? Or Hamas?
U.S. forces tried to rescue journalist James Foley and other American hostages during a secret mission into Syria and exchanged gunfire with Islamic State militants only to discover the captives were not there, officials said on Wednesday.
Islamic State, the Sunni militant group which seeks to establish a caliphate in parts of Iraq and Syria, released a video on Tuesday that gave the strongest indication yet it might attempt to strike American targets.
The bloody sectarian warfare in Iraq and Syria and the swift takeover of wide swaths of territory by the Sunni fundamentalist ISIS — now calling itself a “caliphate” — has triggered calls to cooperate with Shiite Iran as a counterweight.
Under President Barack Obama, the world is becoming unglued. Iraq is being overrun by Islamist terrorists, and the United States is now evacuating its Baghdad embassy.
The United States said it could launch air strikes and act jointly with its arch-enemy Iran to support the Iraqi government, after a rampage by Sunni Islamist insurgents across Iraq that has scrambled alliances in the Middle East.
President Barack Obama threatened U.S. military strikes in Iraq on Thursday against Sunni Islamist militants who have surged out of the north to menace Baghdad and want to establish their own state in Iraq and Syria.
Syria, defeated by Israel in three wars and afraid its arch enemy had gained a nuclear arsenal, began in earnest to build a covert chemical weapons program three decades ago, aided by its neighbors, allies and European chemical wholesalers.
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