...I disagree that we are on course to make mistakes. President Obama is not George Bush. He is a very smart leader.

Kind of two-faced of them, don't ya think?

big difference.

evacuating some 5500 embassy workers.

That would take a ship or a lot of planes...so I'd go ship.

That's the size of a small town. Who knew?

The big difference being that the people who live in your county don't cost the American taxpayer nearly a million dollars a year each to live there.

bushes.

Iran states very clearly and unambiguously that Iraq needs no help from Iran:

where a Shiite President has continually diminished the power of the Sunnis and Kurds.

This is a very complex puzzle that IRAQ needs to seriously work on - while dealing with extremists who have some support of the non extremist Sunni population. It is interesting to remember that in 2006/2007 when Iraq was in a violent civil war, things quieted down when many Sunni leaders turned against the extremists and pushed them out of their areas.

Could the Iraq government, by offering some power to the minorities (Kurds, Sunnis) push the balance again - so the Sunnis would reject the extremists who are - at this point kicking them out of their homes? Note that at this point, most of the people displaced by the attacks are Sunnis. Other than the Iraqi soldiers, they are maybe the people paying the highest price for the violence.

going to the Iraqi military. So, I don't think we'll be listening to Iran on this one.

but I'm sure he's figuring Iran can own this if they want. Not exactly something we'd object to.

"we got this."

Cleric al Sadr steps back into the picture, eventually leaving Iraq divided into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions with strong men in charge of each?

Joe Biden was right.

...to protect holy shrines.

So, yeah.

airpower would be welcome?

I assume Iran would want Al Maliki to be dependent on Iran -- not the US.

It may be an interesting choice for him. The US is demanding reform and giving some rights to minorities - seeing that his failure to do so might be part of the cause of the violence. Iran is not publicly asking for anything, but might be pushing Iraq to be a Shiite dictatorship, even more than it now is.

While I think citizens of other countries should all leave Iraq to settle its affairs alone for a few decades, Iranians fighting and dying there is far better than would be yet more Americans doing so.

...given that it could be a direct threat to their own borders.

Al-Maliki is Shiite and totally anti-Sunni and that's Iran's guy. We screwed the pooch in many, many ways in the that country - one of which was supporting this guy, because he had an oil co. background, as president. He only cared about the Shiites and had a total hatred of the Sunni's and we knew it but supported the asshat anyway to get the oil. We got nothing and now predictably, the country is falling apart because Sunni's have been marginalized and terrorized and are now fighting back hard. I feel for the non-crazy Iraqi's (if there are any left), but we just need to stay the fuck out of this.

What they're really saying is this: they are already in Iraq to lead the battle against ISIS, with the tacit approval of the U.S. government, which doubtless is providing all the satellite intel and other logistics the Maliki regime requires (as it once did for Saddam). American as well as Iranian politics pretend that the Iranian intervention be low-key, that it not be acknowledged as having a U.S. greenlight, and that Iran continues to speak out against a U.S. intervention while the U.S. insists "all options are open," even though the U.S. doesn't intend to send troops.