Iraq Calls for Help as ISIS Nears Baghdad

Iraqi officials have sent out an urgent request for U.S. ground troops to help the Iraqi army, as well-armed ISIS terrorists moved to the Baghdad suburb of Abu Ghraib.

The London Telegraph reports that Iraqi officials made their request amid worries that world attention focused on ISIS attacks against the Syrian city of Kobani were a decoy to mask the group's central goal:  seizing the strategic Iraqi cities of Anbar and Ramadi.

Meanwhile, a series of car bomb attacks Saturday in Baghdad killed at least 38 people in Shiite areas of the city.  Islamists also killed a journalist working for a local TV network.

A U.S. defense official told Agence France Presse, "I think it's fragile there now.  They (the Iraqi army) are being resupplied and they're holding their own, but it's tough and challenging."

It is the most dangerous time in the country since the 2011 withdrawal of U.S. troops, with Sunni ISIS forces holding huge tracts of territory in both Iraq and Syria.

ISIS now controls most of the historic Euphrates valley running from Turkey into Syria and Iraq.

The U.S. military announced Saturday that it had launched more airstrikes in Iraq and Syria, hitting a small Islamic State fighting unit.  U.S. pilots also carried out air drops to resupply Iraqi security forces.

But criticism of the Obama administration is mounting as the air strikes fail to halt ISIS military gains.

Critics claim that the air strikes have fallen short because of a lack of intelligence and military support on the ground. 

 But one U.S. pilot told the Daily Beast website, "The problem is that once you get American boots on the ground...one of those guys gets captured and beheaded on national TV."