Don't dignify the thugs currently rampaging through the wreckage we left behind in Iraq as some kind of Islamic State.
IS, ISIS, ISIL, NO!
Calling them Islamic anything sullies the reputation of an entire faith that is carried by over a billion people, most of whom are not thugs and don't support thugs.
And they are not a State in any formal way. They have no governmental structure, no legitimate claim to territory, they are not an expression of the will of the people they dominate.
This is nothing but a gang of thugs behind a charismatic leader (who may be dead or incapacitated), taking control of war-weakened areas by brute force.
This is a long standing tradition in the Middle East, you can read all about it in the Old Testament. The difference is that this gang received the benefit of huge amounts of modern weapons and money left behind after our blunder into Iraq.
(You'd think, after the disaster following Vet Nam where the North Vietnamese appropriated our deserted artillery and rampaged through SE Asia after we left, would have been a lesson, but nope, we did it again).
By calling themselves The Islamic State, they flatter themselves, con their devotees and bluff the rest of the world. Our media had a field day with this in the runup to the election, using the fear of Islam and of black-hooded thugs to scare up GOP votes. And the GOP Congress will use this to amp up their push for moar war.
I would ask that we don't play to their frame.
The French have used the word "Daesh", going so far as "Daesh cutthroats"
http://theweek.com/...
And that makes more sense to me, call them what they are: somewhere between "one who crushes something underfoot" and "one who sows discord": Daesh.