Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) considers Robert O'Neill, the former Navy SEAL who says he shot Osama Bin Laden, a personal friend. 

In an interview with Business Insider on Thursday, Maloney said she met O'Neill shortly after the 2011 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's compound in Pakistan and eventually arranged for the shirt he wore that day to be donated to the 9/11 Memorial Museum in Manhattan. The shirt is adorned with a distinctive black American flag that was designed to be camouflaged for nighttime missions. At a ceremony when the shirt was given to the museum, Maloney said O'Neill told the story of the final seconds of Bin Laden's life.

"I'm really glad that one of the last things, if not the last thing, that Bin Laden saw was our beautiful black flag and Robert's eyes. Robert looked him right in the eyes and Robert said he was scared," Maloney recounted. "He could see fear in his eyes, Robert said that." 

Maloney said that O'Neill and his team did not believe they would survive the raid on Bin Laden's compound because they believed the building was boobytrapped. 

"He said when he went in there that a lot of them didn't feel they'd be getting out of there," the congresswoman explained.

O'Neill discussed his participation in the raid in an interview with the Washington Post on Thursday. He originally planned to reveal himself in a story in the newspaper and a Fox News documentary later this month, but changed his plans after the website SOFREP identified him on Monday. Hours after the Post published its interview with O'Neill, Reuters released a report citing an anonymous source who said O'Neill did not fire the fatal shot.

According to Maloney, though O'Neill claims to have killed Bin Laden, he never attempted to take sole credit for the operation. 

"He always says it was a team effort, 'The team got him and I was part of the team," Maloney said.

The congresswoman specifically said O'Neill pointed out the heroics of his team leader, who went into the room where Bin Laden was first and pushed one of the terrorists wives who was in there out of the way and "on the floor so Rob would have a clean shot." Maloney said O'Neill believed this was extremely dangerous because of the probability the people surrounding Bin Laden were wearing suicide vests.

"Rob thought he was going to be blown up, he thought his friend was going to be blown up," said Maloney.

However, there was no explosion and O'Neill was able to take a shot at Bin Laden.

"He felt felt his friend, when he pushed the wife to the floor, it was going to be the end of his friend, he was going to be dead," Maloney said of O'Neill. "But he made a clear room for Robert to come in."

Before O'Neill fired the shot, Maloney said Bin Laden made a final effort to use another one of his wives as a shield.

Needless to say, it didn't work.

"And he turned and he looked at Bin Laden," Maloney said of O'Neill. "And he said [Bin Laden] pulled his youngest wife in front of him, she was shorter than him. So, he shot him in the head and shot him in the heart."

Maloney said she believed O'Neill hit Bin Laden three times. 

"I think he shot him in the head and the heart twice," said Maloney.  

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Former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill has apparently been telling people he shot Osama Bin Laden during a 2011 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's compound for several years now.

However, O'Neill's story only became widely known in recent days. His public debut began on Oct. 29 when Fox news announced plans to air a two-part documentary entitled "The Man Who Killed Osama Bin Laden" featuring an interview with the SEAL who fired the fatal shot.

On Monday, SOFREP, a well-regarded website dedicated to covering national security and the US special operations forces community, reported O'Neill was the person who would be appearing in the documentary.

Three days after he was identified by SOFREP, O'Neill gave an interview to the Washington Post where he confirmed he would be the star of the Fox News broadcast. He also said he was profiled in Esquire last year where he was only identified as "The Shooter."

In his interview with the Post, O'Neill said he decided to go public after speaking with families of people killed during the September 11th attacks at the 9/11 Memorial Memorial Museum in Manhattan. 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) spoke to Business Insider on Thursday and said she arranged for O'Neill to appear at the museum for a ceremony after she encouraged him to donate the shirt he wore during the raid to the facility.

"I know him. He's a friend of mine. He's come to New York and visited with other friends of mine," Maloney said of O'Neill. "He's a hero. He's a national hero. He risked his life for our country."

Maloney told us what O'Neill said to the families at the ceremony at the museum. However, she also said it was not the first time she heard him discuss his role in the May 2011 raid. 

"I met him through a friend and I met him after Bin Laden was killed, the same year Bin Laden was killed," said Maloney. "I met him, you know, I'd say in July I met him back then and, you know, we're friends, we talk. ... I used to see him quite a bit. He used to work near where my home is in Washington."

Maloney said she "knew" about O'Neill's role in the shooting when she met him as he had already shared the story.

Hours after O'Neill's interview with the Post was published, Reuters released a story citing an anonymous source who said other SEALs disputed O'Neill's claim he fired the fatal shot at Bin Laden. 

Since leaving the Navy in 2012, O'Neill has worked as a public speaker and given lectures on his experiences as a SEAL. 

O'Neill could be in hot water for going public about his participation in the raid. In 2012, Matt Bissonette, another SEAL who was involved in the operation, released a book about his experience. Earlier this summer, the Department of Justice launched a criminal investigation into whether Bissonette illegally leaked classified information.

The Pentagon has provided a pair of statements to Business Insider indicating O'Neill could face similar consequences. O'Neill has not responded to multiple requests for comment from Business Insider. 

For her part, Maloney said O'Neill was a "great patriot." She also said she would like to see him donate other items to the 9/11 Memorial.

"I also feel that he has a lot of other items that should be in that museum," said Maloney. "I personally think the magazine should be there. It took three shots the other shots are there. I'd like to see the magazine in the museum. I wanted the whole uniform, he just gave the shirt."

Though Maloney said she was certain O'Neill still has the magazine used in the gun that killed Bin Laden and has not used it since the raid, she does not think he has the whole weapon.

"I think the gun probably went back to the government," Maloney explained.

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Russian tanks and men are reportedly rolling into Ukraine again, a day after Russian President Vladimir Putin met with top military officials to discuss the "deterioration of the situation" in the east of the country.

Ukraine says a convoy made up of 32 tanks, 16 howitzer cannons, and 30 trucks of troops and equipment crossed the border into the rebel-controlled Luhansk region, Sky News reports.

"The deployment continues of military equipment and Russian mercenaries to the front lines,"Ukraine military spokesman Andriy Lysenko said in a televised briefing.

Andrei Purgin, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, said the Ukrainian army had launched "all-out war" on rebel positions, the Russian news agency RIA said.

Kiev denied this, saying the army remained in agreed positions.

"We refute these allegations ... we're strictly fulfilling the Minsk memorandum (on a cease-fire),"Ukrainian military spokesman Vladyslav Seleznyov told Reuters by telephone.

The fighting is along the fault lines that have been extended by Russian-backed separatists over the last two months.

Russia is also charging Ukraine with deliberately shelling a school, although The Interpreter reports that Moscow has not provided evidence and public information does not point to Ukraine military positions.

Representatives of the separatist regions earlier put out a joint statement calling for a redrafting of the Minsk deal, which established a cease-fire in exchange for Kiev granting "special status" to eastern territories.

Rebels say Ukraine has violated the deal by seeking to revoke a law that would have granted eastern regions autonomy. Kiev says this was a consequence of Sunday's separatist leadership elections, which it says go against the agreement.

At least 4,000 people have died during the conflict. 

SEE ALSO: The War In Ukraine Is Now A Very Active 'Frozen' Conflict

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Russian President Vladimir Putin took a quick break from politics to describe the 'the meaning of life' at the 15th Congress of the Russian Geographical Society.

"In general, love is the whole meaning of life, of being. Love of family, of children, and of the Motherland. It is such a multifaceted phenomenon that is the basis of all our actions," he said in the conclusion of a speech at the event, reports RIA Novosti.

Additionally, he expressed his hope that the Russian Geographical Society might be able to "strengthen the love for the Fatherland," according to RIA Novosti. (The words for 'Fatherland' and 'Motherland' are interchangeable synonyms in Russian.)

Love for the Fatherland "is exactly that most important task to which we must all strive towards, and I am absolutely convinced that success awaits us," he told the RGS.

Putin is the chairman of the board of trustees of the Russian Geographical Society.

(h/t Alec Luhn)

SEE ALSO: Russian Tanks Are Rolling Into Ukraine Again ...

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As the US makes a military and strategic "pivot to Asia," it is entering a highly complex and fluid geopolitical environment.

China's territorial disputes with its neighbors in the South China Sea have become a major point of contention in the region and maybe even a source of future violent conflict — and the rising superpower is far from the only country in the area with conflicts on its borders.

This map shows that the borders in Asia aren't nearly as fixed as they might seem. China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, have numerous simmering boundary disputes. So do regional powers like Russia and Japan, along with more peripheral players in central Asia and the South China Sea.

SEE ALSO: This map shows how the South China Sea could lead to the next world war

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Forbes came out with its list of the most powerful people in the world earlier this week. 

US President Barack Obama came in second. 

Russian President Vladimir Putin came in first. 

While Forbes obviously doesn't have the final say on world power, it is compelling to investigate why Putin, the ruler of a faltering quasi-republic, is considered the most powerful person alive. 

For one, he has a remarkable grip on power. He became prime minister in 1999. That gig lasted until 2000, when he switched to president, which lasted until 2008. Then he became prime minister again — until 2012. He then went back to being the president of Russia, an office he's held since May 2012. 

He's effectively run the world's largest country by landmass for 15 years. In roughly the same period, the US has cycled through Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.

While American presidents struggle with a foot-dragging Congress, Putin seems to do whatever he wants.

You could argue that, this year, Putin has executed the most flagrant displays of power yet. 

Forbes editor Caroline Howard lists a few of his 2014 highlights: 

• Putin annexed Crimea.

• Putin started a proxy war in Ukraine.

• Putin landed a $70 billion gas pipeline deal with China.

But wait, there's more: Putin continues to keep European energy in a chokehold, and he hosted a (mostly) successful winter Olympics. Putin has even figured out the meaning of life, as expressed during the 15th Congress of the Russian Geographical Society.

"In general, love is the whole meaning of life, of being," Putin said. "[Love for Russia] is exactly that most important task to which we must all strive towards, and I am absolutely convinced that success awaits us."

In short, Putin went for it in 2014.

And he isn't backing down from his ambitions, no matter what Obama, David Cameron, and the rest of the gang have to say. 

"The bear isn't asking anyone for permission,"Putin said of Russia in another recent speech."The bear is considered a strong and a very traditional animal ... (and) will not surrender."  

SEE ALSO: The 25 Most Powerful People In The World, According To Forbes

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Well, this is cool. 

On what is the 35th anniversary of the Iran hostage crisis, the CIA is taking to its Twitter account to break down what's "real" vs. "reel" in the movie "Argo," which is about the events.

On Nov. 4, 1979, militants invaded the U.S. embassy in Tehran, taking 66 Americans hostage. Six of them managed to escape and found refuge in the home of a Canadian ambassador. Fifty-two of them stayed in captivity for 444 days. The CIA has also written about the Iran hostage crisis on its blog. 

The 2012 film, which stars Ben Affleck, John Goodman, Bryan Cranston, and Alan Arkin, is a retelling of the historical events, highlighting one agent's work to get the hostages out of the country. 

As with some historical films, "Argo" took a few liberties in the retelling of the story. So the CIA is straightening things out.

There's still a bunch of the film left to cover, so it'll be interesting to see how long the tweets go on. 

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 In this excerpt from The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, Frederick Taylor, a German historian, describes the moments leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall by weaving together history, archival materials, and personal accounts.

At around 11:30 p.m, a group of East Berliners pushed aside the screen fence in front of the border crossing and everyone swarmed into the checkpoint area en masse.

Checkpoint commander Lieutenant-Colonel Harald Jäger decided that he was not prepared to risk the lives of himself and his soldiers. He ordered his men to stop checking passports, open up fully, and just let the crowd do what it wanted.

And the crowd knew what it wanted.

Within moments, thousands began to pour through the checkpoint. They simply walked or, in most cases, ran into West Berlin. The sensation of running freely over the bridge, of crossing a border where such an action, just days or even hours before, would have courted near-certain death, brought a surge of exhilaration that, if we are to believe those who were there, all but changed the chemical composition of the air and turned it into champagne.

Large crowds had already gathered on the Western side. They greeted the Easterners with cries of joy and open arms. Many improvised toasts were drunk.

By midnight, all the border checkpoints had been forced to open. At the Invalidenstrasse, masses 'invaded' from the West and met the approaching Easterners in the middle.

It was now twenty past midnight, and the entire East German army had been placed on a state of heightened alert. However, in the absence of orders from the leadership, the 12,000 men of the Berlin border regiments remained confined to barracks. The night passed, and the orders never arrived.

Between one and two a.m., human swarms form East and West push their way through the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Some are still in their sleepwear, ignoring the November cold.

Thousands luxuriate in the sensation of walking around the nearby Pariser Platz — embassy row — an elegant city landmark closed for thirty years by barbed wire, concrete blocks and tank traps, turned by state decree into a deadly no man's land. People are clambering on top of the Wall to caper and dance and yell their hearts out in liberation and release and delight.

A mix of hype and hope has defeated bureaucratic obfuscation. A little over six hours after a fumbled press conference and a Western press campaign that took the fumbled ball of the temporary exit-visa regualtion and ran with it, a revolution occured.

One of the swiftest and least bloody in history. 

The fall of the Berlin Wall, like its construction, took place in a single night. Just as on 13 August 1961, a city and a people awoke to find themselves divided, so on the morning of 10 November 1989 that division was no more.

Although, how many people actually woke up to this relevation is debatable, since during that night in Berlin many had not slept a wink.

Excerpted from The Berlin Wall: A World Divided by Frederick Taylor, (HarperCollins Publishers, 2006). Excerpted with permission by Frederick Taylor.

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When the Berlin Wall fell 25 years ago, it meant Russia wouldn't be able to dominate eastern Europe as it had.

The historic fall on Nov. 9, 1989 also meant European democracies would no longer have to worry about a hostile superpower looming over their neighborhood.

That held until this year, when Russia reverted to many of its Cold War-era policies. Vladimir Putin's annexation of Crimea and support for an armed separatist rebellion in eastern Ukraine represent a crucial reversal, even though they're far from a full restoration of Russia's former reach.

To be sure, Putin's aggressive policies in 2014 did not erase the progress that began in 1989. Eastern Europe enjoys remarkable political freedom and national sovereignty compared to a quarter-century ago. It is true that there have been some tough spots since then: Hungary is backsliding into autocracy and the years after 1989 have seen armed conflict in Moldova, Georgia, Azerbaijan, the former Yugoslavia, and now Ukraine.

But 11 European countries that were socialist autocracies the day the wall fell are now in the EU and 13 are in NATO. Vladimir Putin can't do anything to change that — even though he's embarked on an alarming return to the Cold War playbook over the past year.

There's his cultivation of his own personal "class of 1937," a corps of totally loyal young professionals and civil servants from conservative or peripheral regions of the country modeled after a similar, Stalin-led effort. There's his anti-US rhetoric that goes beyond the purview of policy disagreement, like Putin's attacks on American democracy during a speech in Sochi last month.

There's Putin's global misinformation campaign, culminating in Kremlin media attempts to whitewash the cause of the crash of a commercial airliner over eastern Ukraine in July — a tragedy that was almost certainly the fault of pro-Moscow separatists, carried out with Russian-supplied weaponry.

Most typical of the Soviet toolset is Putin's recourse to violence to push his objectives forward or resolve the crisis of the moment — regardless of what's permissible under normative international relations or international law.

Thus, the constitutional replacement of a pro-Kremlin leader in Kiev this past February led to Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea. The shoot-down of MH17 and the sectoral EU and US sanctions that followed were met with the invasion of eastern Ukraine by an estimated 5,000 Russian troops in August. 

Putin hasn't dealt with Russia's diplomatic, political, and economic isolation through compromise or moderation but through even greater belligerence — the kidnapping of an Estonian intelligence agent, the deployment of a submarine to Swedish territorial waters, scores of violations of NATO airspace, veiled threats of the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons.

It's possible to even map out the emerging strategic battlefront that Putin's policies are creating:

The Berlin Wall has long fallen. The world, and eastern Europe in particular, is in a better place today than it was 25 years ago because of it.

But Putin has reached back to the oppositional politics of the Cold War era, returning Europe to a time in which an aggressive and revisionist Russia is willing to use its military advantages over its neighbors to project its power west.

The front line is several hundred miles east of where it was on Nov. 9, 1989. But even if it's on a more limited scale or confined to a different sector of the map, the overall power dynamic that the Wall starkly and dramatically symbolized for nearly three decades is making a troubling comeback.

SEE ALSO: Putin describes the "meaning of life"

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US military has drawn up plans to significantly increase the number of American forces in Iraq, which now total around 1,400, as Washington seeks to bolster Iraqi forces battling the Islamic State, US officials told Reuters on Friday.

The US aims to help advise and train Iraqi and Kurdish forces battling Islamic State fighters who swept into much of northern Iraq.

According to a statement from the Pentagon,  "The commander-in-chief has authorized Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel to deploy to Iraq up to 1,500 additional US personnel over the coming months, in a non-combat role, to expand our advise and assist mission and initiate a comprehensive training effort for Iraqi forces."

This deployment will "accommodate the training of 12 Iraqi brigades," including nine from the Iraqi Army and three from the Kurdish Peshmerga, the paramilitary of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government. 

The decision was made "based on the request of the Government of Iraq, US Central Command's assessment of Iraqi units," and "the progress Iraqi security forces have made in the field."

This doubling of the US' ground presence in Iraq would come at a time when the American-led coalition in the country has made ambiguous progress in the fight against ISIS. Heavy aerial bombardment against ISIS positions outside of Kobane have managed to prevent the group from taking over the fiercely contested town, which sits on the Turkish-Syrian border.

Here are the latest positions of US airstrikes against ISIS, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies' Military Edge project:

But ISIS is consolidating its gains in the heavily Sunni Anbar Province of western Iraq, where it has carried out massacres against the Albu Nimr, a Sunni tribe whose militia had been fighting against jihadists in the region since 2004. And last month, Obama reportedly sent a letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, suggesting that cooperation against ISIS could help smooth the way to an eventual nuclear deal.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Bill Trott)

SEE ALSO: The miscalculation at the heart of Obama's letter to Iran's Supreme Leader

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You have to be able to withstand insane physical tests just to train as a body guard for North Korea's regime.

Propoganda video from the secretive country shows just how grueling this training regimen is. Recruits have to smash their heads through tile, get hit in the stomach repeatedly with a mallet, and complete other painful-looking tasks.

A man who says he served as a body guard to late North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il for 10 years before he rose to power as the country's leader talked to CNN about what boot camp was like.

Lee Young-guk said the training is meant to engender loyalty, since the guards will eventually be tasked with protecting North Korea's elite.

There's also plenty of anti-American indoctrination. 

"A hand gun doesn't win a war," Lee said. "Tae Kwon Do serves nothing but the spirit. It's being used to develop loyalty. They're trying to make them think that by training like this, they can beat the US military." Recruits were also reportedly brainwashed into believing that Kim was a god, Lee said.

Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, now runs the country. They both have reputations for ruthlessness, and for not hesitating to kill off their enemies — whether real or perceived.

Here's what body guard trainees are expected to go through:

They have to withstand being beaten in the stomach with a mallet:

They have to break blocks with their heads:

They also have blocks broken over them:

And have their hands smashed:

Check out the full video below:

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NASA's Super Guppy is big enough to fit entire planes in its teardrop-shaped cargo hold. It's as close to a flying babushka doll as an aircraft can get.

Its main function is to transport spaceship parts around the world, including components of a the world's biggest effort in manned space exploration: The International Space Station. And earlier today Canadian astronaut David Saint-Jacques tweeted a photo of NASA's Super Guppy on the tarmac in Houston, Texas, one of NASA's major bases of operation.

NASA's venerable "Guppy" transport plane. Carries sections of spaceships! pic.twitter.com/KNIHHRPASU

— David Saint-Jacques (@Astro_DavidS) November 7, 2014

NASA got the Super Guppy as part of a barter agreement with its European counterpart, the European Space Agency. The transport plane's cargo hold measures 25 feet in width and height and 111 feet in length.

According to NASA, the maximum payload the Super Guppy can carry is 26 tons. 

Those metrics easily beat that of many military-grade transport planes like the venerable C-130 Hercules (even the bigger variant of the Hercules has a cargo hold just half as long as the Super Guppy's, and the plane can carry up to about 22.5 tons).

The Super Guppy's loading mechanism isn't exactly the kind of thing you could quickly use on a battlefield — loading two planes takes nearly three hours, for example.

But it's also what gives it such awesome scale: The entire nose is hinged and sits atop wheels that can open the cargo hold to up to 200 degrees.   

This is what the Supper Guppy looks like when a crew opens the mouth of the plane: Even though one of the Super Guppies was acquired from the European Space Agency, the original was US-made, as was its ancestor, the Pregnant Guppy.

"The Pregnant Guppy had humble beginning on the proverbial cocktail napkin," writes a website dedicated to the history of the Guppy family of aircraft.

A few entrepreneurs "were discussing the problems NASA was having transporting the rocket booster stages aboard ships through the Gulf of Mexico" and hit on the idea of addressing that problem using a giant, oddly shaped plane.

The Pregnant Guppy was built from Boeing parts and first flew in 1962. It carried components used in the Apollo space program which eventually put twelve men on the moon.

But it was cannibalized for spare parts in 1979.

SEE ALSO: This incredible 1950s plane led to some of the military's most important modern aircraft

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CNN earned widespread mockery Friday night when it apparently ran a headline referring to a Navy SEAL killing "Obama" instead of "Osama."

"SEAL WHO CLAIMS HE KILLED OBAMA UNDER ATTACK," it read.

According to video posted by Mediaite, CNN ran the chyron for at least the majority of a 45-second segment. People on Twitter quickly noticed the error:

Wow the SEALs are out of control pic.twitter.com/g0F9Dvidbh

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) November 8, 2014

Oops @cnn. Killed Obama??? pic.twitter.com/mQIVImrpAv

— Mike Gleeson (@thegeneralisin) November 8, 2014

The segment addressed the controversy surrounding Robert O'Neill, who claims he was the soldier who fatally shot Osama Bin Laden in the 2011 raid on a Pakistani compound. As CNN noted, however, other SEALs are reportedly disputing O'Neill's version of the events.

CNN eventually replaced "Obama" with "Bin Laden" in the headline, Mediaite said.

SEE ALSO: Navy SEAL 'Saw The Fear In Bin Laden's Eyes' Before Shooting Him

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The Obama administration's plan for Iraq — train 20,000 Iraqi troops and incorporate Sunni tribes into a new national guard — is off to a rough start:

First, many details of the training program have yet to be worked out, and the new national guard won’t be ready for at least six months.

Second, the situation continues to deteriorate. Islamic State militants have consolidated control of about 80% of Iraq's crucial Anbar province by killing resisting tribesmen by the hundreds. Meanwhile, Shia militias — some of them backed by Iran — are using the fight against the Islamic State (aka ISIS or ISIL) to burn Sunni communities to the ground.

Third, Shia Iran remains a huge obstacle as it pulls the strings in Iraq's Shia-dominated government and interferes with plans to arm Sunni tribesmen.

"The United States is not the first player in Iraq. Iran is the first player in Iraq. They think Sunni fighters will be like militias for the Sunnis," Najim al Jabouri, a retired Iraqi army general who is now a fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, told Jonathan Landay of McClatchy. "I think Iran is working very hard to stop the United States' strategy in Iraq."

The US won't incorporate the Sunni tribes until the new Iranian-backed Shia government agrees to provide them with arms. The US also has to figure out how to train the Iraqi police — and the new interior minister, who is now in charge of the police, was previously a senior official of the Badr Organization, a Shia militia trained and armed by Iran.

The problems facing Obama's plan to defeat ISIS are ironic given that the Obama administration effectively handed off Iraq to Iran as a way to remove US troops and still stabilize the country.

The opposite happened in the years after Washington went along with the plan created by Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's Qods Force, by continuing to support the authoritarian Iran-backed regime of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Ali Khedery, the longest continuously serving American official during the Iraq war (2003 to 2009), recently said that America's continued support of  Maliki in December 2010 made it so that "Iraq’s path toward civil war was really inevitable." 

That's because Maliki's new lease on life led him to steer Baghdad "toward a very pro-Iranian and sectarian agenda, which inevitably disillusioned and disenfranchised Sunni Arabs for a second time."

Tim Arango, the Baghdad bureau chief of The New York Times, told Reddit in September that "after 2011 the administration basically ignored the country. And when officials spoke about what was happening there they were often ignorant of the reality."

Khedery argued that the Obama administration "betrayed the promises that the US government had made to the Sunni tribal leaders," who had previously fought with American troops against ISIS-predecessor Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) during the Iraq War.

Now those same tribes the US needs again are being co-opted or slaughtered by the ISIS militants who regrouped (with the help of Saddam-era officials) while Maliki polarized the country.

Saving Iraq is also contingent upon political stability in Syria, where the Iran-backed regime of Bashar Assad continues to rain barrel bombs on civilian areas while Al Qaeda's Syria affiliate routs US-backed rebels, ISIS runs a self-declared caliphate, and Tehran sends more fighters to bolster Assad.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is limited in how much pressure it can put on Iran because it is trying to sign a nuclear deal with Iran — the centerpiece of Obama's foreign policy — in the next three weeks.

So while Syraq burns and the White House scrambles for a nuclear deal, Tehran is using the ISIS crisis to its full advantage.

SEE ALSO: Many Of The Military's Top Leaders Can’t Stand The Retired General Leading The Anti-ISIS Coalition

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U.S. air strikes destroyed an Islamic State convoy near the Iraqi city of Mosul but U.S. officials said on Saturday it was unclear whether the group's top commander Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had been in any of the 10 targeted vehicles.

Colonel Patrick Ryder, a Central Command spokesman, said the U.S. military had reason to believe that the convoy was carrying leaders of Islamic State, an al Qaeda offshoot which controls large chunks of Iraq and Syria.

The convoy consisted of 10 Islamic State armed trucks.

"I can confirm that coalition aircraft did conduct a series of air strikes yesterday evening in Iraq against what was assessed to be a gathering of ISIL leaders near Mosul," said Ryder, using another name for Islamic State.

"We cannot confirm if ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was among those present."

According to an Al Arabiya News Channel report, the leader of the extremist militant group was "critically wounded."

Islamic State had been changing its strategy since the air strikes began, switching to lower profile vehicles to avoid being targeted, according to residents of towns the group holds.

A Mosul morgue official said 50 bodies of Islamic State militants were brought to the facility after the air strike.

Mosul, northern Iraq's biggest city, was overrun on June 10 in an offensive that saw vast parts of Iraq's Sunni regions fall to the Islamic State and allied groups.

A month later a video posted online purported to show the reclusive Baghdadi preaching at Mosul's grand mosque.

Earlier on Saturday, Al-Hadath television channel said U.S.-led air strikes targeted a gathering of Islamic State leaders in a town near the Syrian border, possibly including Baghdadi.

Iraqi security officials were not immediately available for comment on the report from the station, part of Saudi-owned al-Arabiya television, but two witnesses told Reuters an air strike targeted a house where senior Islamic State officers were meeting, near the western Iraqi border town of al-Qaim.

Al-Hadath said dozens of people were killed and wounded in the strike in al-Qaim, and that Baghdadi's fate was unclear.

Mahmoud Khalaf, a member of Anbar's Provincial Council, also said there were air strikes in al-Qaim. He gave no details.

The U.S.-led coalition carried out air strikes near al-Qaim overnight, destroying an Islamic State armored vehicle and two checkpoints run by the group, Ryder said.

BOMBINGS

The hardline Sunni Islamic State's drive to form a caliphate has helped return sectarian violence in Iraq to the dark days of 2006-2007, the peak of its civil war.

It has also created a cross-border sanctuary for Arab militants, as well as foreign fighters whose passports could allow them to evade detection in Western airports.

On Saturday night a car bomb killed eight people in Baghdad's mostly Shi'ite Sadr City, police and hospital sources said, bringing to 28 the day's toll from bombs in the Iraqi capital and the western city of Ramadi.

An attack by a suicide bomber on a checkpoint in Ramadi in Anbar killed five soldiers. "Before the explosion, the checkpoint was targeted with several mortar rounds. Then the suicide humvee bomber attacked it," said a police official.

There was no claim of responsibility for the bombings, but they resembled operations carried out by Islamist militants.

In the town of Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, a gunman killed a Shi'ite militiaman, and a car bomb targeting a police officer killed his 10-year-old son, security sources said.

U.S. TROOPS

Western and Iraqi officials say air strikes are not enough to defeat the Sunni insurgents and Iraq must improve the performance of its security forces to eliminate the threat.

President Barack Obama has approved sending up to 1,500 more troops to Iraq, roughly doubling the number of U.S. forces on the ground, to advise and retrain Iraqis.

The Iraqi prime minister's media office said the additional U.S. trainers were welcome but the move, five months after Islamic State seized much of northern Iraq, was belated, state television reported.

The United States spent $25 billion on the Iraqi military during the U.S. occupation that toppled Saddam Hussein in 2003 and triggered an insurgency that included al Qaeda.

Washington wants Iraq's Shi'ite-led government to revive an alliance with Sunni tribesmen in Anbar province which helped U.S. Marines defeat al Qaeda.

Such an alliance would face a more formidable enemy in Islamic State, which has more firepower and funding, and it may not be possible because of mistrust between Sunni tribes of Anbar and the Baghdad government. 

(Additional reporting by Ahmed Rasheed and Raheem Salman in Baghdad and Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Dominic Evans)

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Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-New York) is fuming mad over the White House's claim that the thousands of troops being deployed against the Islamic State (also called ISIS or ISIL) doesn't count as "boots on the ground."

"I think this is an insult to combat veterans to try to explain how we have already lost over 6,000 lives, spent over $7 trillion, in a war that has not been declared," Rangel told Business Insider on Saturday afternoon. "The whole theory that we can say, 'We're not at war because there's no boots on the ground,' is an insulting thing to say." 

Rangel made the comments while addressing President Barack Obama's decision to send an additional 1,500 troops to fight the Islamic State, to a total of 3,000. Administration officials insisted Friday that the White House is "not going to be putting US men and women back into combat," but Rangel again called the claim "insulting" to veterans like him.

Echoing other liberal stalwarts like Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York), Rangel further said the Constitution demands an official vote to go to war and Congress was abdicating its duty by not more forcefully demanding the president go through this process.

"The Congress is guilty of allowing this to happen. If indeed our national security is threatened, then Congress should debate it ... Congress should vote on it. There should be a universal draft. And we should set aside money or more taxes to pay for it. But how in the hell we can go to the funerals, and go further into debt, and say, 'We're not at war,' challenges common sense," said Rangel, who has long called for a draft.

Rangel would vote against such a resolution, however. He said the Islamic State did not constitute enough of a national security threat. The group's militants have beheaded multiple US hostages but have largely focused their violence in Iraq and Syria.

"I just want to make it clear that if our great country's security is being threatened, then we ... should do everything we can to defend our country. I don't know anyone who goes to sleep at night thinking ISIL and ISIS is a threat to our national security. The bigger threat they are [is] to the countries in the surrounding areas, and they don't even have boots on the ground either!" Rangel exclaimed.

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According To Multiple Sources, as of 12:10 AM EST, The two Americans released seemingly out of nowhere by North Korea have returned to US soil.

ABC News and CNN have reported the news via Twitter.

Perhaps the most surprising piece of this whole story was the involvement of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. 

Kenneth Bae and Matthew Todd Miller, who had been doing hard labor for months in the reclusive country, were being accompanied home by Clapper, his office said. Their release comes less than three weeks after another American was freed by Pyongyang.

Bae, a missionary from Washington state, was arrested in North Korea in November 2012 and sentenced to 15 years hard labor for crimes against the state. Miller, who reportedly was tried on an espionage charge, had been in custody since April this year and was serving a six-year hard labor sentence.

The United States had frequently called for the men to be freed for humanitarian reasons, especially since Bae was said to have health problems.

"He (Clapper) was not there to negotiate. And our position hasn't changed."

As Director Of National Intelligence, a job created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Clapper oversees the CIA and some 15 other intelligence agencies, making his involvement in the release surprising. U.S. officials said it was the first time a National Intelligence Director had been involved in such a high-profile diplomatic matter.

U.S. officials said it was the first time a National Intelligence Director had been involved in such a high-profile diplomatic matter.

An Obama administration official, who declined to be identified, said there was no connection between Clapper's trip and the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons, but that he acted as a presidential envoy with a broader mandate to listen to what North Korea had to say.

Arrangements for the release had come together in the past several days and North Korea had asked for a high-ranking envoy to be involved, the official said.

Clapper went to Pyongyang but there was no indication that he met personally with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The men were released just hours before President Barack Obama was to start a trip to Asia that will include talks with Chinese leaders about how Beijing can use its influence with North Korea to rein in its nuclear weapons program, U.S. officials have said.

"It's a wonderful day for them and their families," Obama said at the White House. "Obviously we are very grateful for their safe return and I appreciate Director Clapper doing a great job on what was obviously a challenging mission."

A senior U.S. official said: "The DNI (Clapper) did carry a brief message from the President indicating that Director Clapper was his personal envoy to bring the two Americans home."

Bae's delighted son, Jonathan, told Reuters from Arizona that he received a call Friday night and spoke to his father. "The brief time on the phone, he sounded good," Jonathan said. "I'm sure he will be back to his old self in no time."

"It came out of the blue. One minute he was doing farm labor and the next minute they are saying, 'You are going home.' Just like everyone else, he was surprised," he said.

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As an intelligence officer in the Marine Corps during the US troop surge and the "Anbar Awakening," Marine captain Wesley Gray had a first-hand view of some of the most important events of the American campaign in Iraq. He trained the country's nascent armed forces, learned Arabic, and witnessed the Sunni tribes' turn against Al Qaeda during the most crucial moment of the US mission.

But Gray, who comes from a small town in northern California, took an untraditional path to the military. He said he always planned on becoming a soldier: "My whole life I always knew I wanted to do my service," he says. "It was just the mater of the timing of it."

He ended up joining the armed forces at an unlikely point in life, two years into a competitive and intense finance PhD program at the University of Chicago. "I was kind of thinking, it's not like my opportunity costs are going to get any lower," he recalls. "If I'm ever going to actually do this I just have to go for it."

He convinced his program advisor to grant him a four-year sabbatical, which is three years longer than what students are typically allowed. This was in 2004, when the campaign in Iraq was intensifying.

Gray soon graduated towards the top of his Marine training class. He chose to become a "ground intelligence officer," basically an infantry soldier with intelligence duties and expertise — a "grunt with a map" in Marine parlance, according to Gray. He was entrusted with training and organizing Iraqi army personnel and was in the country at a time when the US began paying Sunni tribal leaders to join the fight against Al Qaeda: the "Anbar Awakening" that led to Al Qaeda in Iraq's defeat in the late 2000s.

Gray left the Marines in 2008 and returned to his PhD program, somewhat to his professors' and classmates' surprise — "they didn't' think I would show up again" after his military career, Gray recalls. His experience in Iraq would end up having an unmistakable resonance in his post-military life and when attempting to launch Alpha Architect, a financial services startup that he says now manages $200 million in assets. Working with Iraqi soldiers and officials and applying his military and intelligence training in an active war zone gave Gray invaluable insights into human nature that he later brought to his business.

"It was all about understanding the psychology of people and really trying to get through that," he says of his work in Iraq. "It meant realizing that everyone has cultural baggage and behavioral influences. You think everyone would be rational. But that's simply not the case."

That realization applied to more than his Iraqi counterparts — it was crucial to being able to function in a war zone. "People are highly emotion-driven," he explains. "That's something you learn a lot about in the military and you learn to control that. When you're getting shot at you don't duck. You get up and shoot back when your emotion says to turn the other way."

The military's honor and service-driven ethos also helped him hone his own unique sense of what he wanted his business to stand for. "We're trying to be more user-friendly and honorable than the traditional kind of dog-eat-dog Wall Street company," he says, explaining that his company is geared around investor education and publicly available research. "That's something that comes form being in the military. It's a humbling thing that translates over."

Gray explains that in the Marines, the officers eat last — the leaders aren't in it for themselves, just by virtue of what the organization values. So Gray wanted to create a company distinguished through its transparency, a place that would buck the traditional "middle man"-like function of a typical financial firm. Right now, he has 10 full-time employees, including a recently hired ex-Marine captain.

Since leaving the Marines, Gray has finished his PhD at Chicago, written a book about his experiences in Iraq, and taught at Drexel University before deciding to go into business.

He says that veterans can successfully transition to civilian life so long as they're able to leverage their connections in the civilian world, especially among fellow ex-military personnel who are in a position to help them.

"Just reach out to someone who's also a vet  — who's already been successful and made that transition and learn from them," says Gray.

SEE ALSO: How an American pilot survived a 6-on-1 dogfight during the Vietnam War

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President Barack Obama isn't ruling out sending additional troops to fight the Islamic State (also known as ISIS or ISIL) jihadists in Iraq.

"You know, as commander-in-chief I'm never going to say never," Obama said in a Sunday interview with CBS' "Face the Nation," according to a transcript.

Obama was responding to suggestions that the US is succumbing to so-called "mission creep" in its fight against the Islamic State — gradually sending more and more soldiers until the conflict becomes indistinguishable from a formal war. On Friday, the White House announced it was doubling its ground troops in Iraq, bringing the total from 1,500 to 3,000.

But Obama told CBS he actually expected to see US troop totals to decline in the region.

"What the commanders who presented the plan to me say is that we may actually see fewer troops over time because now we're seeing coalition members starting to partner with us on the training and assist effort," he added.

Obama also dismissed critics who say the US is misleading the public by insisting these troops are not engaged in an active combat role. On Saturday, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-New York) told Business Insider that such claims are "insulting" to veterans risking their lives for their country. And Kurdish officials have told the Daily Beast they've seen US special forces fighting on the ground.

"What hasn't changed is our troops are not engaged in combat," Obama said. "Essentially what we're doing is we're taking four training centers with coalition members that allow us to bring in Iraqi recruits, some of the Sunni tribes that are still resisting ISIL, giving them proper training, proper equipment, helping them with strategy, helping them with logistics."

The president further said US troops could dispatch the Islamic State but militants would simply come back after the US withdraws. The only solution, Obama maintained, is for Iraqi troops to win the fight on the ground.

"What we learned from the previous engagement in Iraq is that our military is always the best. We can always knock out, knock back any threat," he said. "But then when we leave, that threat comes back."

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IN THE Haskell Free Library and Opera House, which straddles Quebec and Vermont, you can watch a show with one foot in Canada and the other in the United States. Built at the turn of the last century, when both countries boasted about the world's longest undefended border, the cultural centre was created for Derby Line, Vermont, and Stanstead, Quebec. Nancy Rumery, the librarian, says the towns were a "single community that just happened to have an imaginary line drawn through it."

Al-Qaeda's September 2001 attacks on America put paid to that. You can still park in Canada and walk across the border to the front door. But now American officials watch to make sure you go back the same way. Elsewhere in the twin towns, movement has been curbed; gates have turned streets into dead ends. Although Derby Line and Stanstead share water and sewerage systems and a Rotary Club, they are no longer one community, says Brian Smith, a local politician.

Many locals hesitate to cross the border to shop, worship or see friends--for fear of being detained and fined, as befell a local pharmacist who did not report to customs when he crossed over to get a pizza. "It's not like it used to be," says Mr Smith.

The attack in Ottawa last month by a lone gunman, who killed a Canadian soldier and stormed parliament, seems likely to make matters worse. Although there is still uncertainty about the motives of the gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau--possibly a deranged outcast, possibly a religious extremist--the United States is reviewing security along the 5,525-mile (8,890km) line which separates the two countries (including the Alaskan land border).

After meeting his Canadian counterpart in Ottawa in the wake of the attacks, John Kerry, the United States secretary of state, was euphemistic but firm about the need to tighten up. He voiced confidence that the two countries could come up with "some tweaks, some changes, some additions that will promote even greater security than we have today."

It is debatable whether more security on what Senator John McCain recently called the "porous" northern border really will make Americans much safer from terrorism. But it seems hard for politicians to shake off the habit of Canada-bashing. Both Mr McCain and Hillary Clinton (in 2004) have stated, wrongly, that the 9/11 terrorists entered American territory through Canada. An article on the politico.com website last month (before the Ottawa shootings) had the headline: "Fear Canada: the real terrorist threat next door".

What is more certain is that "tweaks and changes" will impede economic exchanges between two countries who are each others' largest trading partners; and they may further fray social relations between once-friendly neighbours. Nik Nanos, a pollster who has tracked cross-border attitudes for a decade, says Canadians and Americans still like each other but have lost enthusiasm for further co-operation, most notably on terrorism.

Unlike the turbulent border with Mexico, the northern frontier usually gets little attention in the United States. It "just doesn't squeak as loud as the southern border," says Paul Frazer, a consultant on diplomatic affairs. Jeh Johnson, homeland-security secretary in the United States, gave a speech on "Border Security in the 21st Century" last month in which the only allusions to Canada were about the 1920s.

Illegal immigration, which haunts American relations with Mexico, is less of a concern in Canada's case. Of the 420,789 people apprehended by America's border patrol in 2013, 98% were caught on the country's south-western edge. On the northern side, guns and drugs are the big worry, says Jose Acosta, an American patrol officer who knows both frontiers and now works near Abbotsford, British Columbia. "We have Ecstasy, meth and marijuana coming south," he says. "Canada gets illegal aliens and guns going north." Mr Acosta often sees guns and drugs hidden in vehicles or on persons heading into Canada. But for anyone who knows the southern border, "it's pretty quiet here."

Still, comparisons with Mexico can understate the difficulty of policing a line which runs through remote spots like the hills of Montana and Alberta (pictured) and four Great Lakes. There has been a rise in security measures since 2001. The number of American border agents looking atCanada seems paltry, at about 2,200, compared with 18,600 dealing with Mexico; but the former figure was only 340 in 2001.

Since that time the United States has also added aircraft with sensor arrays, thermal cameras, video surveillance and unmanned aircraft to watch remoter areas. Aaron Heitke, deputy chief patrol agent in Montana, says that when he started 13 years ago his main item of equipment was binoculars. Now, in addition to his weapon, he has a radiation detector, night goggles and thermal imaging. Perfect security is impossible. Ross Finlayson, a member of a globe-trotting club, trekked through wild terrain from Montana to Canada last summer, bringing a passport and some anti-bear spray. Neither proved necessary.

Canada has assuaged some American concerns--by arming 5,685 customs officers; agreeing to joint patrols on the Great Lakes; and helping to form teams that include coast guards, border agencies and police from both countries. By one estimate, Canada spent an additional C$92 billion ($77 billion) on security in the ten years after 9/11. On November 4th it announced a new surveillance web, with radar, ground sensors and thermal radiation detectors, along 700km of the border.

Yet while the United States sees the border through the lens of security, Canada thinks of bilateral trade worth $2 billion a day. Businesses of all kinds moan that stringent procedures depress activity. Costs rise when lorries have to queue for hours to be inspected several times over.

Although border security is not the only factor, Canada's share of trade in the United States has stalled since 2001 (see chart). The near-quadrupling of North American trade in the first 20 years of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement largely concerned the United States and Mexico. (The value of United States trade with Canada tripled over the period, while that with Mexico grew more than sixfold.)

In the wake of the Ottawa shooting, Canadian businesses fear an overreaction, says John Manley, who heads a group representing the country's largest firms. A shopping centre on Cornwall Island in the Canadian bit of Akwesasne, a piece of land set aside for the Mohawk people, shows how changing regimes harm small businesses. When the Mohawks objected to the arming of Canadian guards, Canada moved a customs post north to the mainland. This left the mall in no-man's-land. Travellers from the United States are now told not to stop until they reach Canadian customs. The change has cost the mall's sports store C$50,000 a year and has made some units unrentable.

Canada and the United States have made periodic efforts to ease the flow of goods and people: some cargo clearance has been moved away from the border, and American customs officers now work in some Canadian airports. Beyond the Border, a plan launched with fanfare in 2011 by President Barack Obama and Stephen Harper, Canada's prime minister, aims to create joint perimeter security. But work on aligning standards and rules has been sporadic. Every resumption, such as a meeting last month in Washington, DC, is hailed unconvincingly as a new start.

While Canada is keen, the other side lacks the will for a sustained push. Coolness between Mr Obama and Mr Harper hardly helps. Ms Rumery, the librarian at that cultural centre on the border, could see her nightmare come to pass--users having to clear customs to get through her door.

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