WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama came under fire on Sunday from Republican lawmakers, who warned that a debacle in Iraq will give militants a staging area for "the next 9/11."
Senator Lindsey Graham, a proponent of US air strikes, also called for the resignation of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and direct US engagement with Iran on the crisis set off this week by a lightning offensive by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants group.
Fighters from the group routed the much larger Iraqi army, seizing the country's second largest city Mosul and sweeping towards Baghdad.
The United States moved an aircraft carrier and two missile-guided warships into the Gulf on Saturday as Obama weighed his options.
Retired military officers questioned whether air strikes were a viable near-term option with no US forces on the ground to provide precise targeting data.
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