Lawmakers say ISIS is capable of attack on US soil: 'They are more powerful ...

Bloodthirsty Islamic fanatics marauding through the Middle East 'pose a threat to our backyard,' lawmakers warned Sunday, as an Iraqi official said the militants are burying women and children of a religious minority alive.

Despite continuing air strikes in Iraq against members of the Islamic State, or ISIS, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said Americans will have to fear an attack on U.S. soil unless more decisive action is taken to stop the group's advance.

'Mr. President, be honest with the threat we face,' said Graham. 'They are coming.'

The militants are not just a threat to Iraq and Syria, but a 'direct threat to our homeland,' said Graham (R-S.C.) on 'Fox News Sunday.'

Rep. Pete King called President Obama's commitment to limited military action - he has ruled out boots on the ground - 'really a shameful abdication of American leadership.'

'They are more powerful than Al Qaeda was on 9/11,' King, (R-L.I.) said on NBC's 'Meet the Press.' 'They have 10 times, 20 times more money than Al Qaeda ever had. They have much more weapons than Al Qaeda ever had. And ISIS has hundreds of foreign fighters with them, available to come to the United States to attack us.'

'I lost hundreds of constituents on 9/11. I never want to do that again,' he added.

Even Hillary Clinton put some distance between her foreign policy views and Obama's in an interview published Sunday.

The former secretary of state told The Atlantic that the lack of American support for moderate rebels in Syria contributed to the rise of the Islamic State.

'The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against (Syrian President Bashar) Assad - there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle - the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,' Clinton said.

Iraq's human rights minister Sunday said forces with the Islamic State have killed at least 500 members of the imperiled Yazidi religious minority group in Iraq, burying some of their victims alive and capturing hundreds more women as slaves.

Mohammed Shia al-Sudani told Reuters the militants carried out the massacre after seizing the city of Sinjar, and were seen cheering and waving their weapons over rows of their victims' corpses.

'This is a vicious atrocity,' he said.

The U.S. has launched an air campaign in Iraq in part to protect the Yazidis, whose practices date to ancient times, from a possible genocide.

The Iraqi government has obtained images that 'show indisputably that the gangs of the Islamic States have executed at least 500 Yazidis after seizing Sinjar,' Sudani said.

'Some of the victims, including women and children, were buried alive in scattered mass graves in and around Sinjar,' he said. 'In some of the images we have obtained there are lines of dead Yazidis who have been shot in the head while the Islamic State fighters cheer and wave their weapons over the corpses.'

News of the mass killings came as the U.S. launched more air strikes against militant vehicles and mortars firing on Irbil. It was the fifth round of air strikes American forces have conducted against the extremist Sunni group.

The President, before he left for a Martha's Vineyard vacation Saturday, said that although air strikes will be carried out, 'ultimately there's not going to be an American military solution to this problem.'

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said limited strikes are the appropriate response.

'Only Iraq can save Iraq,' he said on 'Meet the Press.' 'Escalating it is not in the cards. Neither the American people nor Congress are in the business of wanting to escalate this conflict beyond where it is today.'

But Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the militants pose a threat in 'our backyard' and are growing stronger as the group picks up more recruits.

'Inaction is no longer an option,' Feinstein, (D-Calif.) said in a statement.

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