Baghdadi fell to the Islamic State last Thursday, the first major town the group had seized in Iraq and Syria for months. The grab came after a series of reverses, most famously the loss of the ethnic Kurdish town of Kobane on the Syrian-Turkish border last month. Baghdadi is just five miles northeast of Asad Air Base, where some 300 US Marines are now training members of the Iraqi Army's 7th Division.
The day after the town fell, IS launched a suicide attack on the gates of the base. It was repelled, but served as a reminder of the US troops now in harm's way in Iraq, and of how much IS would like to get hold of some of them.
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Islamic State's obsession with extreme brutality is by now well established. Its leader, who goes by the nom-de-guerre Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has long since established a reputation as the Hulagu Khan of modern times, after the 13th-century Mongol leader who routinely had whole cities put to the sword.