"The battle, expected near the end of the year, threatens to be long and grueling. If IS fighters dig in against an assault, they have hundreds of thousands of residents in the city as potential human shields. And as residents flee, they fuel the humanitarian crisis in Iraq's Kurdish...
... In July, the Pentagon announced that 560 [that's not many] more U.S. troops would deploy to Iraq to transform Qayara air base, south of Mosul, into a staging hub for the final assault...."
[just think if Obama hadn't pulled troops out of Iraq when he 1st became president? Probably there would be no ISIS
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_IRAQ_BATTLE_FOR_MOSUL?SITE=DCUSN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
-vk-
