New Zealand Defence Force trainers and supporting force elements are now established in their base in Taji and have begun the task of training Iraqi security forces in a range of military skills to help in the fight against Islamic State.
NZDF Land Component Commander Brigadier Peter Kelly presents an almost benign view of the situation in which the New Zealand and Australia defence force personnel now find themselves.
Their job involves, apparently, training focusing on basic operational skills such as planning, weapons training, basic manoeuvres and the profession of arms.
In Iraq, the Defence Force is building on decades of experience. It goes right back to the 1950s when the Defence Force was sent to Malaya to help train the Malay forces.
However, while Brigadier Kelly almost implies the soldiers have gone for an extended break in a sunny desert, Islamic State fighters are celebrating their second major conquest in a week in Syria and Iraq as they pick through the ruins of the historic city of Palmyra.
And now, IS says it is behind a suicide bombing on a Shia mosque in Saudi Arabia that killed at least 21 people. The attack in Saudi Arabia's Easter Province is the first to be claimed by the Saudi branch of IS which was formally establised in November last year.
The United Nations said one third of Palmyra's 200,000 strong population has fled. And IS militants used social media to show themselves posing amid ancient columns in Palmyra on Thursday. Other images displayed a more familiar theme: the summary slaughter of local men whose blood drenched the road.
The seizure of Palmyra follows the equally startling conquest of Ramadi in Iraqi's Anbar province. Both operations, nearly 1000km apart, have become emblematic of a terror group that can have its way across two crumbling countries, despite the embattled state forces being assisted by global powers.
It is estimated IS now controls half of Iraq and Sryia and its latest advance has prompted a re evaluation across the region.
From Beirut to Baghdad and as far away as Riyadh, regions are coming to terms with an organisation that can win most of its battles and successfully storm Syria and Iraq's best defended bastions. Some strategic cities in both Syria and Iraq are all that stand between IS and total domination of the region.
Scenes of armed forces fleeing for their lives and leaving arms, ammunition and armoured vehicles behind for IS fighters to use in the brutal fight provide a different view of the landscape to the one portrayed by Brigadier Kelly.
Until recently, the conventional wisdom in Washington and London, and the Arab capitals, was that IS had been forced on to the back foot, suffering from shortages of cash, weapons and problems of resupply. The capture of American supplied arms and supplies abandoned by Iraqi forces has solved some of those problems.
The Obama Administration says the setbacks are due to a lack of training and reinforcements. But former United States defence secretary Robert Gates puts it bluntly: the US does not have a strategy. It is playing the situation day by day.
Many questions will now be asked in Damascus and Baghdad - and above all in Washington - about how the militants have managed to score major advances in both Iraq and Syria despite all the efforts to stop them.
The Western coalition's bombing campaign has clearly hurt IS where it could. But it can never compensate for ground forces which are not competent, equipped or motivated enough to stand firm and hit back. Will that be the next step?
French President Francois Holland says the world must act to stop the extremists and save Palmyra.
New Zealand troops have a major job on their hands to train Iraqi fighters to turn back the brutal IS fighters. The Defence Force needs to provide New Zealanders with a realistic assessment of the situation the soldiers in Taji find themselves, without resorting to cliches.
