cup. nothing wrong with a little patriotic cheering for america s team. trust me, we re obsessed, too. we ll talk about that in a minute. returning to our focus on iraq, how much longer than al maliki stay in power as his country slips further into chaoses? senior u.s. officials and arab diplomats tell cnn his ouster may be a foregone conclusion, especially after he rejected u.s. appeals to form an emergency unity a government right now. opening it up to the sunnis that he s kept can out for eight years. with the hope of subduing sunni hill tants seizing entire portions of iraq and syria, the terrorist militia group called the islamic state in iraq or isis say unless a new more inclusive government is formed in iraq, the u.s. will not launch air strikes yet as they requested. but do they need the u.s. if they now have syria?
and a half years ago, leaving behind u.s.-trained iraqi forces. right now, those iraqis are all that are standing in the way of this brutal terrorist militia group who first gained ground in syria and now, as we have been reporting, iraq. it appears the iraqis are losing the battle. today, isis is gaining more footholds, marching closer to baghdad. fighting breaking out in a new town, city of baqubah less than 40 miles north of baghdad. colonel rick francona, let me bring you in. welcome. good afternoon. do we know what these 275 u.s. troops will be doing? any idea? yeah. they re there to beef up the security embassy. that s a huge embassy, the largest in the world, at one time 5500 people working there. so their security force is not equipped to take on a battle so they are in there to plan an evacuation if that needs to happen and provide security in the case of that.
doing anything else. when yahoo! news asked john kerry about possible air strikes earlier today, he said they are on the table. well, they re not the whole answer but they may we ll be one of the options. when you have people murdering, assassinating in these massachusetts kers, you have to stop that. and you do what you need to do if you need to try to stop it from the air or otherwise. today, a u.s. navy ship is joining other forces in the persian gulf including an aircraft carrier, guided missile destroyer and anguided missile cruiser. u.s. was drew troops from iraq two and a half years ago. right now, they are pretty much that is standing in the way of a terrorist militia group called the islamic state in iraq and syria or isis. it is creeping toward baghdad. it has control of mosul, the second biggest city in iraq and