Top U.S. general in Iraq to assess anti-IS campaign
Wanted ‘firsthand look at situation’
America’s top military leader arrived in Iraq on Saturday on a previously unannounced visit, his first since a U.S.-led coalition began launching airstrikes against the extremist Islamic State group.
The visit by Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, came just two days after he told Congress that the United States would consider dispatching a modest number of American forces to fight with Iraqi troops against the extremist group.
The Iraqi military and security forces, trained by the U. S. at the cost of billions of dollars, melted away in the face of the group’s stunning offensive this summer, when it captured most of northern and western Iraq, including the country’s secondlargest city Mosul.
Dempsey said Thursday that Iraqi forces were doing a better job now, although an effort to move into Mosul or to restore the border with Syria would require more complex operations.
He also told the U. S. House Armed Services Committee that America has a modest force in Iraq now, and that “any expansion of that, I think, would be equally modest.”
Dempsey’s spokesman, Air Force Col. Ed Thomas, said Dempsey planned to visit U.S. troops, commanders and Iraqi leaders. “The primary purpose of his visit is to get a firsthand look at the situation in Iraq, receive briefings, and get better sense of how the campaign is progressing.”
The visit included talks in Baghdad with Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and U.S. Ambassador Stuart E. Jones, Thomas said. Dempsey later flew to Irbil, where he met with Kurdish President Massoud Barzani.
Dempsey also visited the U.S. joint operations center in Irbil, got a briefing on the Kurdish offensive against the Islamic State group and held a town hall with deployed troops, Thomas said.
The Pentagon has plans to establish an expeditionary advise and assist center in Irbil where U.S. troops will provide assistance to Iraqi forces at the brigade and higher levels. The U.S. also is planning to set up a training site near Irbil.
Dempsey’s visit to Iraq comes a day after Iraqi forces drove Islamic State militants out of a strategic oil refinery town north of Baghdad, scoring their biggest battlefield victory yet.
On Saturday, state television said government forces had control of the refinery, Iraq’s largest, which lies some 15 miles north of the town of Beiji.
The loss of Beiji marks the latest in a series of setbacks for the jihadi group, which has lost hundreds of fighters to U.S.-led coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria. On Friday, activists there reported significant progress by the town’s Kurdish defenders.
Meanwhile on Saturday, two parked car bombs exploded minutes apart north of Baghdad, targeting a security checkpoint and killing nine people, authorities said. Later, a booby-trapped house in Baghdad blew up as a joint army and police force searched it for weapons, killing five.