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Tony Abbott must be wary of 'mission creep' after the Prime Minister announced weapons drops to assist groups fighting IS in Northern Iraq, says Paul McGeough.

The Prime Minister is right when he says that Australia's escalating involvement in the Iraq conflict is nothing like 2003, when Australia joined the US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

But if he means that Iraq 2014 somehow is less dangerous than it was 11 years ago, then that is not the case.

In 2003, the Shiite majority and its various militias followed instructions from their spiritual leadership, to stay home and to leave it to Saddam's overrated military machine and the US-led foreign forces to deal with each other.

Iraqi security forces and Iraqi Shi'ite volunteers carry their weapons during an intensive security deployment to fight against militants of the Islamic State. Photo: Reuters

That was a brief battle in which Saddam's conventional forces collapsed without putting up much of a fight.

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Subsequently, brutal Sunni al-Qaeda affiliates emerged, taking a more sinister fight to the foreign forces and to the new, US-trained and funded military of the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad and its ruthless unofficial militias.

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Iraq more dicey than ever