Iraq Request U.S. for Air Support (Video)
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Worthy News)– Iraq has requested the U.S. for air support to target the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS), Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey said during a Congressional hearing yesterday.
Baghdad said it wanted U.S. air strikes as the insurgents, led by fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), battled their way into the biggest oil refinery in Iraq and the president of neighbouring Iran raised the prospect of intervening in a sectarian war that threatens to sweep across Middle East frontiers.
“We have a request from the Iraqi government for air power,” Dempsey told a Senate hearing in Washington. Asked whether the United States should honour that request, he said: “It is in our national security interest to counter ISIL wherever we find them.”
In the Saudi city of Jeddah, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said Baghdad had asked for air strikes “to break the morale” of ISIL. — Source