Afghanistan: Obama authorizes possible airstrikes against Iraq --- President Obama has authorized airstrikes against Sunni Muslim extremists who punctured Kurdish defenses in a powerful offensive in northern Iraq on Thursday, and has sent U.S. military aircraft to drop food and water to besieged Iraqi civilians in the region. -- Obama, in a late-night statement delivered at the White House, said that strikes would be launched against extremist convoys “should they move toward” the Kurdish capital of Irbil, where the United States maintains a consulate and a joint operations center with the Iraqi military. -- “We intend to take action if they threaten our facilities anywhere in Iraq . . . including Irbil and Baghdad,” he said. -- Authorization for airdrops — an initial round of which was completed just before Obama spoke — and for potential airstrikes was a major development in the Iraq crisis that began in June. -- A senior administration official described the airstrike authorization as “narrow,” but outlined a number of broad contingencies in which they could be launched, including a possible threat to U.S. personnel in Baghdad from possible breaches in a major dam Islamist forces seized Thursday that could flood the Iraqi capital. --- U.S. aircraft also are authorized to launch airstrikes if the military determines that Iraqi government and Kurdish forces are unable to break the siege that has stranded tens of thousands of civilians belonging to the minority Yazidi sect atop a barren mountain outside the northern town of Sinjar. -- “As we can provide air support to relieve that pressure, the president has given the military the authority to do so,” the senior official said. He said that congressional leaders had been consulted, but that Obama had the legal authority as commander in chief to launch the strikes to protect U.S. personnel and national security interests.