U.S. airstrikes against the Islamic State began nearly three months ago, yet there have been relatively few changes on the battlefield. Many analysts say the U.S. effort may not be sufficient.
Syrian rebels and Iraqi peshmerga fighters have been allowed to use Turkish territory to enter the fight against militants of the self-declared Islamic State.
Kurdish groups have often quarreled among themselves, or at least kept their distance. But Kurds from Iraq and Turkey have been fighting side by side in northern Iraq against the Islamic State.
Four former Blackwater guards were found guilty last week in connection with a fatal shooting in 2007. Author Brian Castner recommends a book on the toll violence has taken on Iraq.
Among more extreme Islamists, sympathies for the so-called Islamic State are growing — especially in Egypt, where some Islamists are being arrested and accused of terrorism by the police.
A town west of Baghdad and home to a notorious prison, Abu Ghraib is where Iraq troops are bracing for a possible attacks by Islamic State militants. Many local residents feel caught in the middle.
A federal jury found four former security guards with the company Blackwater guilty in connection with the shooting of dozens of Iraqi citizens in 2007 at a Baghdad traffic circle. That shooting revealed the leeway given outside contractors and became a symbol of the U.S. intervention in Iraq.
The self-declared Islamic State has released a video purporting to show its fighters rifling through a crate of grenades airdropped by a U.S. military cargo plane.