Washington - It is too early to determine whether the Iraqi government's assault on militants in the southern city of Basra was a victory for Iraqi security forces, the top US military officer said Wednesday. "It's too early to tell what the, sort of, the strategic outcome is and was it a win or a loss or a victory or a defeat," Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon.
Mullen, however, praised Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for making the strategic decision to take control of Basra from Iranian- backed Shiite militants and criminal gangs.
"There are views that it could have been planned better than it was in that regard," Mullen said. "But again, I'm more positive, particularly in the area that this is the Iraqi leadership and the Iraqi security forces moving in a direction to provide for its own security."
Iraqi security forces launched the assault March 25 and battled the militants to a stalemate before the Mahdi army loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr was ordered to stop fighting the government's forces.
Mullen said the situation in Basra has calmed and the US military planned to analyze the performance of the Iraqi forces. President George W Bush has tied US troop withdrawals to the building of competent Iraqi security.
Mullen said there were no plans for additional withdrawals after most of the troops ordered into Iraq's under Bush's "surge" last year come home by the end of July. The troop surge expanded the US presence in Iraq from 130,000 to 160,000 and helped to dramatically reduce levels of violence once coming into full effect last summer.
"This was a particularly violent week time-frame, as we know," Mullen said. "And it is the kind of violence and lack of security that would certainly drive an assessment of what we would do after that."
Attacks on US troops in Baghdad, carried out mainly by al-Sadr's militia, increased drastically during the last week in March.
The top American commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and the US ambassador, Ryan Crocker, are scheduled to brief Congress on the progress in Iraq under the troops surge on Tuesday.
