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United States officials are “closely monitoring” a potential “humanitarian catastrophe” in northern Iraq but will not be sending combat troops back into the country, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Thursday. Earnest said the United States would cooperate with Iraqi military and Kurdish authorities in the volatile region, but he declined to respond to several questions about whether the U.S. would consider any military action to protect refugees fleeing advancing Sunni militants. “I’m not in position to shed light on the president’s thinking” on the subject, Earnest said.

You can tell how bad a crisis is based on the staged photos that Obama’s official propaganda photog deploys for action.On August 2nd, the situation was only mildly severe, so Pete Souza gave us this photo of Obama leaning back in the White House while chatting with Susan Rice and an NSA guy. But then major newspapers (the kind his donors read) started talking about genocide in Iraq and Obama’s inaction. So after signing off on some aid drops, after a whole bunch of non-Muslim Yazidi kids had died of thirst, this photo was deployed for action.The photo was retweeted...

Washington (CNN) -- Two U.S. F/A-18 jet fighters bombed artillery batteries of Sunni Islamic extremists in Iraq on Friday, escalating America's military involvement more than two years after President Barack Obama brought home forces from the country. Obama authorized "targeted airstrikes" if needed to protect U.S. personnel from fighters with the Islamic State, formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS. The U.S. military also could use airstrikes to prevent what officials warn could be a genocide of minority groups by the Islamic State fighters. The U.S. aircraft dropped 500-pound laser-guided bombs on a "mobile artillery...

President Barack Obama stepped in front of the cameras on Thursday to utter words he hoped he would never say as commander in chief. "I've therefore authorized targeted airstrikes if necessary to help forces in Iraq," Mr. Obama said in a statement from the White House. "Today America is coming to help." The return to military engagement in Iraq is a reversal for Mr. Obama, whose early opposition to the war that toppled Saddam Hussein, and his promise to end it, fueled his long-shot campaign for the White House.

WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today issued the following statement on U.S. operations in Iraq: “The president’s authorization of airstrikes is appropriate, but like many Americans, I am dismayed by the ongoing absence of a strategy for countering the grave threat ISIS poses to the region. Vital national interests are at stake, yet the White House has remained disengaged despite warnings from Iraqi leaders, Congress, and even members of its own administration. Such parochial thinking only emboldens the enemy and squanders the sacrifices Americans have made. The president needs a long-term strategy – one that defines success...

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

U.S. President Barack Obama authorized air strikes on Iraq to protect Christians and prevent "genocide" of tens of thousands of members of an ancient sect sheltering on a desert mountaintop from Islamic State fighters threatening to exterminate them. The United States began to drop relief supplies to refugees from the ancient Yazidi sect, but there was no sign yet of air strikes, which Obama authorized for the first time since pulling troops out in 2011. ... U.S. oil majors Exxon Mobil and Chevron evacuated expatriate staff from Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, industry sources said. Smaller oil companies that operate in...

Ed Henry on Fox News just reported from the White House that word has been given Obama will speak sometime tonight on worsening situation in Iraq and the U.S. response which so far involves humanitarian aid airdrops in northern Iraq.

Obama speaks from the White House

President Obama has approved a mission to to drop humanitarian aid in Iraq for the 40,000 or so religious minorities stranded on a mountaintop in the country's north after Islamic militants forced them to flee, senior U.S. officials told Fox News Thursday night. However, the officials said the air drops had not yet begun. If all goes well, they said, the mission will be completed following a single pass of U.S. military cargo jets. The officials did not disclose the planes' starting point due to host nation sensitivities. It was possible the mission also could include air strikes to protect...

The United States is sending cargo planes to drop pallets of humanitarian aid and supplies to stranded Iraqi citizens threatened by the militant Islamic group ISIS, U.S. officials said today. The air drop mission has begun, officials told ABC News

President Obama said Thursday that United States military aircraft had dropped food and water to thousands of Iraqis besieged by Islamic militants on a mountaintop in northern Iraq. Speaking from the State Dining Room at the White House, the president said he had directed the United States military forces to conduct targeted airstrikes on the militants if they moved to take Erbil, threatening the American citizens and military personnel there.