President Barack Obama announced Thursday he is sending up to 300 elite U.S. troops to Iraq.Warning that “the fate of Iraq hangs in the balance,” Mr. Obama hedged on whether he wanted a change in Iraqi leadership as the price for providing combat support in the form of air strikes.
But he held off granting a request for air strikes from the Shi’ite-led government and renewed a call for Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to do more to overcome sectarian divisions that have fuelled resentment among the Sunni minority. A source close to Maliki told Reuters that the government planned to hit back now that it had halted the advance which saw ISIL seize the main northern city of Mosul, capital of Nineveh province, 10 days ago and sweep down along the Sunni-populated Tigris valley toward Baghdad as the US-trained army crumbled.
