Telephone call of US Vice President Joe Biden and Acting Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki --
The Vice President and the Prime Minister reaffirmed the long-term partnership between Iraq and the United States pursuant to the Strategic Framework Agreement, including their commitment to coordination in the fight against ISIL (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant), which represents a threat to the entire region.
What's interesting there is the singling out of ISIL as the regional threat. They'll probably take it as a compliment, being just one of the insurgent groups in Syria and indeed not the Al Qaeda-approved insurgent group.
It's tough to read too much into one clause of one sentence, but could the US really be thinking about some kind of intervention just against ISIL while leaving the Al-Assad's -- whose brutality metastatized ISIL into a combined Iraq/Syria operatoin -- intact?
What's interesting there is the singling out of ISIL as the regional threat. They'll probably take it as a compliment, being just one of the insurgent groups in Syria and indeed not the Al Qaeda-approved insurgent group.
It's tough to read too much into one clause of one sentence, but could the US really be thinking about some kind of intervention just against ISIL while leaving the Al-Assad's -- whose brutality metastatized ISIL into a combined Iraq/Syria operatoin -- intact?