WTF?

Administration aides said on Thursday afternoon that Mr. Obama was considering airstrikes or airdrops of food and medicine to address a humanitarian crisis among as many as 40,000 members of religious minorities in Iraq, who have been dying of heat and thirst on a mountaintop where they took shelter after death threats from ISIS fighters.

[...]

Airstrikes on towns in northern Iraq seized by Islamist militants began late Thursday in what Kurdish and Iraqi officials called the first stage of an American-led intervention to blunt the militants’ advance and provide emergency aid to tens of thousands of refugees.

Kurdish and Iraqi officials attributed the bombing campaign to American forces. But the Pentagon firmly denied that American forces had begun a bombing campaign. Pentagon officials said it was possible that allies of the United States, either the Iraqi or Turkish militaries, had conducted the bombing.

A Turkish official said the country’s air force had not conducted any operations.

[...]

Anwar Haji Osman, deputy minister of the pesh merga, the Kurdish military force, said in the televised statement that his forces had been in contact with the Americans and that the bombings had been carried out by fighter jets.

[...]

A top Iraqi official in Baghdad close to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said that the Americans had consulted with the Iraqi government Thursday night about starting the campaign, the government had agreed and the bombing had begun.

[...]

Asked specifically about military options, [press secretary, Josh] Earnest said, “I’m not in a position to rule things on the table or off the table.” But he reiterated that there would be no American combat troops in Iraq and that any military action would be extremely limited.

  NYT

Oh, and…

One official said that any military action would be “limited, specific and achievable,” noting that Mr. Maliki’s political party was supposed to announce a new candidate for prime minister on Thursday, but had not yet.