If Washington is perceived as leading an alliance that includes Iran and Hezbollah, this will augment the propaganda assistance loaned to ISIS with every US missile that falls.
Obama has abetted the rise of ISIS through his cynical strategy of prolonging the war by giving the FSA just enough arms to maintain a stalemate but not enough to actually win.
The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against ISIS that may take three years to complete, involving a coalition of some 40 countries.
Despite Tehran's denials, reports mount from northern Iraq that Revolutionary Guards have been sent into battle against ISIS, and an Iranian drone crashed in a Kurdish village.
Saudi Arabia carried out a sweep of suspected terrorists as ISIS threatened to take Mecca and destroy the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site, calling it a bastion of idolatry.
Lebanon's Minister of Justice called for the "sternest punishments" for protesters in Beirut who burned the flag of the militant groups ISIS and the Nusra Front.
Evidence uncovered by Amnesty International indicates that ISIS has launched a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq, targeting Yazidis and other minorities.
ISIS fighters massacred 700 Turkmen civilians—including women, children and the elderly—in a northern Iraqi village last month, a UNICEF official reports.
ISIS posted videos online of Syrian and Kurdish troops being beheaded, while Nusra Front seized 43 UN peacekeepers near the Israeli line in the Golan Heights.
ISIS supporters posted photos to Twitter of fighters from the militant group in control of warplanes, missiles and tanks seized after the jihadists overran the Syrian air base of Tabaqa.
Thousands of Yazidi refugees who have fled the Sinjar region of northern Iraq have been denied entry into Turkey by military forces, and are stranded in the mountains.
A wave of terror blasts, including at a Shi'ite mosque, left 35 dead across Iraq, as the Pentagon prepares surveillance flights over ISIS territory in Syria.
