Nancy Youssef

The United States finds itself confronting a delicate issue as it opens two joint operations centers in Iraq to help that nation’s forces battle Sunni Muslim extremists who’ve seized much of the countryside:

The United States finds itself confronting a delicate issue as it opens two joint operations centers in Iraq to help that nation’s forces battle Sunni Muslim extremists who’ve seized much of the countryside:

The United States has deployed 300 more troops to Baghdad in the last two days, with some of them assigned to secure Baghdad’s international airport, the Obama administration announced Monday.

The U.S. military named a two-star general to head up the teams that have been sent to Iraq to determine what U.S. military assistance might help halt the advance of radical Islamist insurgents who’ve seized control of much of the country in the past two weeks.

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Cairo, where he voiced strong support for the Egyptian government, saying he believed Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi would bring about democratic reforms.

The elite U.S. commandos who snatched an alleged plotter of the Benghazi consulate attack were acting on a bare-bones criminal complaint whose crucial details remain secret.

The U.S. military seized a Libyan extremist accused in the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sunday as the terror group he once led was locked in fierce combat with forces loyal to a renegade Libyan general who once lived in the United States.

The Pentagon confirmed Tuesday that U.S. Special Forces captured a top Libyan suspect in the September 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens along with three other Americans.

President Barack Obama said Friday that the United States was considering how it might assist the government of Iraq in its fight against the Islamic extremists who seized much of the country this week, but only on the condition that Iraq’s many feuding factions set aside their differences and commit to a national unity government.

Despite some expressions of concern in Congress and a pledge from President Barack Obama that “all options are on the table” for ways to help Iraq’s government beat back a determined advance by Islamist fighters, there were few signs Thursday that Washington was eager to re-engage its military in Iraq.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was scheduled to arrive Friday at an Army hospital in San Antonio, Texas, after spending almost two weeks in Germany for treatment after his five years in captivity by the Taliban.

Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was scheduled to arrive Friday at an Army hospital in San Antonio after spending almost two weeks in Germany for treatment from his five years in captivity by the Taliban.

The government of Iraq, where American soldiers fought and died for the better part of a decade, is in full retreat before an onslaught from a radical Islamist group dedicated to establishing an Islamic state in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon. But the magnitude of the crisis has yet to capture the attention of Washington.

The American military lost at least 200 troops in Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, during the American occupation of Iraq, almost all of them to attacks by what today is known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

As the words left President Barack Obama’s lips on Friday that he had accepted the resignation of retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki as secretary of veterans affairs, a pained groan emerged from a crowd of troops, veterans and civilians who’d gathered around television sets at the Pentagon.