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<p>President Barack Obama says he's sending about 200 more U.S. troops to Iraq to protect Americans and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.</p> <p>The announcement will bring to nearly 800 the total number of U.S. forces in and around Iraq to train local forces, secure the embassy and protect American interests.</p>

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Hundreds of Iraqi troops battling for control of the vital Baiji oil refinery are outnumbered, surrounded and remain trapped inside the facility, a U.S. official told ABC News. The battle for the refinery was in its fifth day today, although fighters for the radical Islamic militia ISIS have apparently taken control of much of the facility and are willing to keep the government forces isolated until they run out of food and ammunition, sources said. "There is very little the Iraqi government can do to save or liberate those guys," a U.S. official told ABC News. There...

Iraq is getting a fresh influx of up to 300 U.S. troops. And while they “will not be returning to combat,” as President Obama said Thursday, they will be taking on a role advising their Iraqi counterparts from the sidelines. What’s that mean exactly? Special Operations troops say a big part of the job will likely be providing command-and-control expertise, along with advice on how to integrate ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) feeds to allow for better intelligence-sharing. Command-and-control entails using service members assigned to use communications gear to connect combat troops with higher command, while ISR refers to various...

Rand Paul: I Don't Blame Obama for Iraq Turmoil BY CARRIE DANN Sen. Rand Paul says he doesn’t blame President Barack Obama for the ongoing turmoil in Iraq and that former Vice President Dick Cheney and other proponents of the Iraq War should ask themselves the same questions Cheney is raising now about the conflict. “What’s going on now -- I don’t blame on President Obama,” Paul said in an interview with NBC’s David Gregory to air on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame the Iraq War...

MOSCOW — Russian President Vladimir Putin has spoken by phone to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, expressing Moscow’s support for his action against the militant offensive. Putin confirmed Russia’s “full support for the Iraqi government’s action to quickly free the territory of the republic from terrorists,” the Kremlin said, adding that Putin and al-Maliki also discussed bilateral cooperation.

Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) defended President Obama from former vice president Dick Cheney’s critiques of his policy in Iraq, saying that he faults Cheney and the rest of President George W. Bush’s team for launching an invasion of Iraq that ultimately strengthened Iran. “What’s going on now, I don’t blame on President Obama,” Paul told NBC’s David Gregory. “But I do blame the Iraq War on the chaos that is in the Middle East. I also blame those who were for the Iraq war for emboldening Iran.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) criticized former Vice President Dick Cheney and blamed "those who supported the Iraq War" for the current crisis in the country in an interview with NBC's David Gregory Friday. Gregory asked Paul about the op-ed co-authored by Dick Cheney and his daughter, Liz that blasted President Barack Obama's handling of the Iraqi crisis and his foreign policy as a whole. Paul said the same questions raised by Cheney in his op-ed could be asked of those who supported the original decision to invade Iraq. He also said he didn't blame Obama for the current crisis, pointing...

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Friday that airstrikes against Islamist militants in Iraq could be counter-productive unless moves were made to create an inclusive government.

With all eyes firmly focused on what really matters (the oil refineries), The Telegraph reports that ISIS has over-run a Saddam Hussein-era chemical weapons (CW) complex. The al-Muhanna 'mega-facility', about 60 miles south of Baghdad, gives the jihadists access to disused stores of hundreds of tonnes of potentially deadly poisons including mustard gas and sarin. The US state department is 'concerned' but "do not believe that the complex contains CW materials of military value." However, as a former commander of Britain's chemical weapons regiment warned, "we have seen that ISIS has used chemicals in explosions in Iraq before and has...

They want all of us to cringe -- and they have succeeded. The Islamic radicals suddenly barreling across Iraq want to make sure people are horrified at their deeds. Leaders of the organization that calls itself ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have launched a sophisticated propaganda campaign that turns the most basic principles of public relations on their head. No PR executive would advise a client to shout to the world details of his most gruesome acts and the extent of his cruelty, but that is precisely what ISIS is doing, and doing so very deliberately. The...

Muslims in Nineveh, Iraq, have ordered Christians to keep their churches closed, and told them that if they open their churches, that they will burn them down.According to a native Iraqi pastor, named Majeed, described this destruction of Christian liberty: That they are not allowed to open their churches. And even if they open them they will burn the churches… And also the Christians have been requested — been asked to pay the tax [dhimmi, the tax for non-Muslims under Islamic rule]. …If not, they can leave Nineveh… And if they don’t leave and don’t pay the tax, they should...

ISIS to Iraqi Christians: 'Obey, Pay, or Leave' By Chris Mitchell CBN News Middle East Bureau Chief Thursday, June 19, 2014 BARTILLA, Iraq -- Throughout its Iraq campaign, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has targeted Christians. Many fled to the relative safety of Kurdish Iraq, but most still fear the wrath of the world's most brutal jihadist group. Pastor Majeed, CBN News' guide, drove with us toward Nineveh where most of the country's besieged Christians have fled. It wasn't long until we went as far as the Kurdish army, called the Peshmerga, would allow us to go. "So...

The country of Iraq is, for all intents and purposes, dead and has been replaced by three successor states, former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden told Newsmax TV Wednesday. "The state of Iraq as we know it is gone, and it's not going to be reconstituted," he told "The Steve Malzberg Show." "We've got three successor states there now," Hayden, a retired four star Air Force general added. "As much as we might look for opportunities to keep Iraq together, we need to be prepared for the reality that it's not going to stay together. "We should snuggle up comfortable...

Well, here’s some lovely news emerging from the new Iraq. 17.09 Chemical weapons produced at the Al Muthanna facility, which Isis today seized, are believed to have included mustard gas, Sarin, Tabun, and VX. Here is the CIA’s file on the complex. QuoteStockpiles of chemical munitions are still stored there. The most dangerous ones have been declared to the UN and are sealed in bunkers. Although declared, the bunkers contents have yet to be confirmed. These areas of the compound pose a hazard to civilians and potential blackmarketers. Numerous bunkers, including eleven cruciform shaped bunkers were exploited. Some of the...

Affiliates of the Iraqi terror group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), also known as ISIS, are praising and potentially recruiting extremists based on controversial tweets by a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) adviser who recently claimed that ISIL is proof that a Muslim “caliphate” is making an “inevitable” return. The recent tweets by Mohamed Elibiary, a controversial figure who serves as a senior member of DHS’ Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC), were recently picked up in the Arabic press and widely disseminated on Twitter by multiple Islamic extremists. Elibiary’s tweets—which disparaged Americans as showing “belligerence” after...

Iraqi forces have regained full control of the country's biggest oil refinery after heavy fighting with Sunni militants attempting to seize it, the authorities claim. A refinery employee and witnesses said the insurgents led by the jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) had withdrawn from the sprawling Baiji complex after losing 100 fighters as troops and helicopter gunships repelled repeated attacks, according to the Iraqi military. The retaking of the plant, north of Baghdad, comes amid calls for the Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki to quit as a condition of US help in driving back insurgents...

Watching the undoing, in a week, of victories that US forces won in Iraq at great cost over many years, Americans are asking themselves what, if anything, should be done. What can prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — the al-Qaida offshoot that President Barack Obama derided just months ago as a bunch of amateurs — from taking over Iraq? And what is at stake for America — other than national pride — if it does? >>SNIP<< The idea is that since the US and Iran both oppose al-Qaida, Iranian gains against it will redound to America's...

Iraqi government forces engaged in fierce fighting with Sunni militants for control of the country's biggest refinery today as embattled Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki resisted a growing clamour from the U.S. to step down. Pictures emerged today showing rebel forces had raised black jihadist banners and manned checkpoints around the key strategic oil facility in Baiji despite government forces insisting they were in 'complete control' of plant. Workers who had been inside the complex, which spreads for miles close to the Tigris river, said Sunni militants seemed to hold most of the compound in early morning and that security forces...

16.52 The remaining chemical weapons from Saddam Hussein's regime are stored in two sealed bunkers, both located at the Al Muthanna Chemicals Weapons Complex, a large site in the western desert some 80km north west of Baghdad. This was the principal manufacturing plant for both chemical agents and munitions during Saddam Hussein’s rule. Thousands of tonnes of chemical weapons were produced, stored and deployed by the Saddam Hussein regime. Iraq used these weapons during the Iran - Iraq War (1980 to 1988) and against the Kurds in Halabja in 1988.

Washington—Sunni extremists in Iraq have occupied what was once Saddam Hussein's premier chemical-weapons production facility, a complex that still contains a stockpile of old weapons, State Department and other U.S. government officials said. U.S. officials don't believe the Sunni militants will be able to create a functional chemical weapon from the material. The weapons stockpiled at the Al Muthanna complex are old, contaminated...