WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered an aircraft carrier moved into the Gulf on Saturday, readying it in case Washington decides to pursue a military option after insurgents overwhelmed a string of Iraqi cities this week and threatened Baghdad.

"The order will provide the Commander-in-Chief additional flexibility should military options be required to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq," the Pentagon said in a statement.

The carrier USS George H.W. Bush, moving from the North Arabian Sea, will be accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun, the statement said. It added the ships were expected to complete their transit into the Gulf later on Saturday.

President Barack Obama said on Friday he needed several days to determine how the United States would help Iraq deal with the stunning advance of Islamist militants, who earlier this week seized several major Iraqi cities and appeared to have set their sights on the capital, Baghdad.

But the U.S. leader ruled out sending U.S. troops back into combat in Iraq, where over 4,000 U.S. soldiers died in the war that followed the 2003 invasion to oust Saddam Hussein, and said any intervention would be contingent on Iraqi leaders overcoming their longstanding political and sectarian divisions.

While the United States has already increased its surveillance assistance to Iraq, conducting drone flights at the request of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, the Pentagon has also prepared a range of options for Obama to consider, including conducting air strikes.

Any stepped-up U.S. actions would be aimed at helping Iraq counter militants of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, who are seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate across much of Iraq and Syria.[ID:nL2N0OU0XR]

The USS George H.W. Bush is a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the largest warships in the world, according to the U.S. Navy. They are powered by two nuclear reactors and can carry a crew of about 6,000.

In addition to fighter jets, helicopters and other aircraft, the ships are equipped with sophisticated anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles.

One U.S. defense official declined to say how the USS H.W. Bush might be used to help Iraq fend off ISIL fighters, but said that such vessels are often used to launch airstrikes, conduct surveillance flights, do search, rescue, humanitarian and evacuation missions, and conduct seaborne security operations.

"Carriers can do all this from the sea, without needing any other country's permission," the official said on condition of anonymity.

(Reporting by Frances Kerry and Missy Ryan; Editing by Eric Beech and Eric Walsh)

Beirut (AFP) - Both Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and jihadist groups battling to oust him stand to benefit from a lightning offensive by militants across the border in Iraq, analysts believe.

Fighters from the powerful jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant began an offensive in Iraq on Monday, taking a swathe of mostly Sunni Arab territory in the north.

The attack led by ISIL, which operates in both countries, has brought Iraq's army to the brink of collapse.

Analysts say their advance could deliver not just a military boost to jihadists in Syria, but also political gains for Assad.

ISIL's brutal tactics and reputation for abuses against civilians and rival rebels may force Western governments to reconsider their support for Syrian insurgents.

"Washington and London are going to find themselves on the same side as Damascus, facing what appears to be a threat to the region, the West and Europe," said Frederic Pichon, author of "Syria: Why the West was Wrong".

Since the Syrian conflict started in March 2011, Assad has become the "bete noire" of the Western governments who opposed him.

With some 162,000 killed in the more than three-year-long conflict and fighting still raging, Assad won a third, seven-year term in office earlier this month in an election dubbed a "parody of democracy" by opponents.

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A Syrian man shows a ballot paper bearing the portraits of the three presidential candidates on June …

- Western policy change? -

But for Bassam Abu Abdullah of the Damascus Centre for Strategic Studies, which is close to the regime, ISIL's advances could alter Western policy.

He said the change may come "because there is an imminent threat to the security and stability of the whole region".

Events in Iraq have bolstered Damscus' claims that the threat posed by "terrorists" in the region requires a regional and international response, he said.

"Particularly when you consider that there are Europeans and Americans among the jihadists' ranks," he said.

The Damascus government labels all rebels as "terrorists" and has repeatedly accused the West, Turkey and Gulf Arab states of backing insurgents financially and militarily.

But the jihadist push on Baghdad could also increase pressure on Assad's troops, other analysts said.

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A man rides his bike across a street in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk on June 14, 2014 (AFP Phot …

Firas Abi Ali, of London-based risk analysts IHS, said the Iraqi army's withdrawal from the border is a major "problem for the Syrian government because they need that border to be open to get supplies from Iraq".

If not enough volunteers can be found to tackle the militant advance in Iraq, it is possible Iraqi Shiite militiamen fighting alongside Assad's troops could be recalled.

This, Abi Ali says, could dent the Syrian government's battlefield strength.

For ISIL, which is currently fighting other rebels in Syria, including their fellow jihadists in the Al-Qaeda-linked Al-Nusra front, their advances in Iraq are a huge military and financial step forward.

- Boosting ISIL prestige -

"The seizure of Mosul is going to increase ISIL's prestige around the world, but especially in Syria," said Romain Caillet, an expert in radical Islamism in the region.

ISIL's successes in Fallujah, Ramadi and Mosul could persuade people "it could also take cities in Syria, which the revolution, for all its outside support, is unable to do," he added.

The jihadist group and its tribal allies brought Iraq's armed forces close to collapse, with many troops shedding their uniforms and abandoning positions and equipment.

"It may not necessarily be a game changer altogether for Syria, but ISIS will come out of all of this significantly strengthened and emboldened with confidence," said Charles Lister of the Brookings Doha Centre.

ISIL "has already transferred captured weaponry and new recruits into parts of northern and eastern Syria, and it seems likely this will serve to bolster their counter offensives in Deir Ezzor and farther west towards Aleppo," he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human rights, a Britain-based monitor, also said weapons seized in Iraq are being taken into Syria.

Some in Syria's armed opposition welcomed ISIL when it first emerged there in spring 2013.

But its systematic abuses and quest for dominance prompted a backlash that escalated into open hostilities between ISIL and a coalition of moderate and Islamist rebels backed by Al-Nusra Front.

The fighting inside Syria pitting ISIL against the rebels and Al-Nusra is estimated to have killed 6,000 people since January.

New York (AFP) - The detained US soldier convicted of leaking a trove of secret documents to WikiLeaks made a rare foray into public life Saturday to warn Americans they were being lied to about Iraq once more.

Chelsea Manning is serving a 35-year prison sentence on espionage charges and other offenses for passing along 700,000 secret documents, including diplomatic cables and military intelligence files, to anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks in the largest-scale leak in US history.

"I understand that my actions violated the law. However, the concerns that motivated me have not been resolved," the soldier formerly known as Bradley Manning wrote in a New York Times editorial.

"As Iraq erupts in civil war and America again contemplates intervention, that unfinished business should give new urgency to the question of how the United States military controlled the media coverage of its long involvement there and in Afghanistan."

President Barack Obama said this week he was "looking at all the options" to halt the offensive that has brought militants within 50 miles (80 kilometers) of Baghdad's city limits, but ruled out any return of US combat troops.

Obama has been under mounting fire from Republican critics over the swift collapse of Iraq's security forces, which Washington spent billions of dollars training and equipping before pulling out its own troops in 2011.

While the US military was upbeat in its public outlook on the 2010 Iraqi parliamentary elections, suggesting it had helped bring stability and democracy to the country, "those of us stationed there were acutely aware of a more complicated reality," Manning wrote.

"Military and diplomatic reports coming across my desk detailed a brutal crackdown against political dissidents by the Iraqi Ministry of Interior and federal police, on behalf of Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki. Detainees were often tortured, or even killed."

Manning, a former US Army intelligence analyst, said he was "shocked by our military's complicity in the corruption of that election. Yet these deeply troubling details flew under the American media's radar."

Criticizing the military's practice of embedding journalists, Manning charged that "the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance."

Manning is serving out the prison sentence at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas and had requested a name change after court-martial proceedings revealed the soldier's emotional turmoil over sexual identity.

A US Army general denied clemency to Manning in April, upholding the 35-year sentence.

Washington (AFP) - The United States condemned an attack on Russia's embassy in Kiev on Saturday and called on Ukraine to provide adequate security for the diplomatic mission.

The US reaction came after a crowd, inflamed by the downing of a Ukrainian military transport plane, tore down the embassy's flag and overturned vehicles as a dozen police looked on.

"The United States condemns the attack on the Russian Embassy in Kiev, and calls on Ukrainian authorities to meet their Vienna convention obligations to provide adequate security," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

US Secretary of State John Kerry, meanwhile, called Ukraine Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and expressed condolences for the 49 troops killed Saturday when pro-Russian rebels shot down the Il-76 transport plane near the airport that serves the city of Lugansk, a senior State Department official said.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Kerry underscored to Yatsenyuk "the commitment of the United States and G7 partners to raise the costs for Russia if it does not end the flow of weapons across the border and break with separatists."

Kerry also called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, voicing the United States' "strong concern" about the transport of heavy weapons and militants across the Russian border into eastern Ukraine, and the downing of the transport plane.

"He pressed Foreign Minister Lavrov to make clear Russia's commitment to de-escalation and peace by ending the flow of weapons and support to separatists, and actively working with Ukraine for a ceasefire, amnesty, and political dialogue," the official said.

Ukraine separatists are using Russia’s tanks, rocket launchers, and other weapons, according to the US State Department.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, some people claim that headlines talking about “Russian tanks invading Ukraine” and “Russian bombers buzzing the US coast line” is mere propaganda being spread by the Western media. This theme was even picked up by representatives for Vladimir Putin who claimed that “Russophobia” over World War 3 startingwas responsible for this type of news. Russia also threatened Finland, saying they should not join NATO and instead remain neutral:

“Anti-Semitism started World War II, Russophobia could start the third. Finland is one of the most russiphobian countries in Europe, together with Sweden and the Baltic states…. Russia recommends Finland not to join NATO. That military alliance has lost its aim and goal and is therefore looking for new tasks. If Finland joins NATO it would weaken the security in Europe, not strengthen it.”

The Ukrainian Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, previously issued a statement accusing the Russian government of ordering tanks through a border checkpoint controlled by pro-Russian Ukraine separatists. Reports claim two columns of armored vehicles entered Ukraine at least two tanks split off from the main formation and drove toward the city of Gorlovka. Avakov claims that the Ukrainian military engaged the tanks being used by the Ukraine separatists.

Russia officially denied these reports of Ukraine separatists using Russian tanks, calling this “another fake piece of information,” but the US State Department claims that is a lie:

“Russia will claim these tanks were taken from Ukrainian forces, but no Ukrainian tank units have been operating in that area. We are confident that these tanks came from Russia…. We also have information that Russia has accumulated multiple rocket launchers at this same deployment site in southwest Russia, and these rocket launchers also recently departed. Internet video has shown what we believe to be these same rocket launchers traveling through Luhansk.”

There’s even Tweets showing the Ukraine separatists using the Russian tanks:

NATOSource @NATOSource Follow State Department confirmed that Russia has sent tanks & other heavy weapons into Ukraine http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/14/world/europe/russia-has-sent-tanks-to-ukraine-rebels-us-says.html?smid=tw-bna&_r=0 … 3:54 PM - 13 Jun 2014 345 RETWEETS 56 FAVORITES

The US government believes the unmarked tanks were purposefully of a type that is not currently being used by the Russian military forces stationed near Ukraine.

To give you an idea of how heavily armed the Ukraine separatists have become, they even managed to shoot down a military plane with 49 people on board. White House spokeswoman Laura Lucas Magnuson has also condemned this action while again referencing the Russian tanks:

“We condemn the shooting down of the Ukrainian military plane and continue to be deeply concerned about the situation in eastern Ukraine, including by the fact that militant and separatist groups have received heavy weapons from Russia, including tanks, which is a significant escalation.”

Do you think World War 3 could be triggered if it’s true that Russia armed the Ukraine separatists? Or do you think the Ukraine crisis will be a proxy war that launches Cold War