The Maliki government of Iraq has formally asked the US to provide airstrikes and other military support to them in their efforts to repel the ISIS rebel attacks. The White House has not made any definite response to that request. However, senators are quite willing to make their views known.
Iraq's Maliki: I won't quit as condition of US strikes against Isis militants As senators say Iraqi PM's sectarian leadership must end, Maliki calls upon west to give urgent air and intelligence support
A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said he will not stand down as a condition of US air strikes against Sunni militants who have made a lightning advance across the country.
Iraq's foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, on Wednesday made a public call on al-Arabiya television for the US to launch strikes, but Barack Obama has come under pressure from senior US politicians to persuade Maliki, a Shia Muslim who has pursued sectarian policies, to step down over what they see as failed leadership in the face of an insurgency.
Dianne Feinstein, the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, told a hearing on Wednesday that Maliki's government "has got to go if you want any reconciliation", and Republican John McCain called for the use of US air power but also urged Obama to "make very clear to Maliki that his time is up".
DiFi and McCain do make a charming bipartisan pair. It is hard to know how their demands offer any kind of constructive way forward. Getting rid of Maliki doesn't provide much assurance that a functional government of national unity would fill the void.
General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, confirmed that the US had received the request for air strikes but said that the fluid state of the Iraqi battlefield had left the US with incomplete intelligence, a factor that made an air campaign more difficult. "It's not as easy as looking at an iPhone video of a convoy and then striking it," he told senators.
This is one of those situations where everybody is saying you have to DO SOMETHING, but it is very unclear what that something might be.
9:26 AM PT: Obama will make statement on Iraq in a few minutes.