On a surprise visit to Iraq, the United States top military officer has said the momentum in the battle with ISIL militants is “starting to turn”.<br /><br /> But General Martin Dempsey still predicted a drawn-out campaign that would last several years.<br /><br /> Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met Iraq’s Defence Minister Khaled al-Obeidi and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad.<br /><br /> Dempsey told American troops that the US military had helped Iraqi and Kurdish forces “pull Iraq back from the precipice”.<br /><br /> “And now, I think it’s starting to turn. So well done,” he added, speaking to a group of Marines at the US embassy in Baghdad.<br /><br /> Dempsey said it had been crucial to show that ISIL was not an unstoppable, 10-foot-tall force and instead “a bunch of midgets running around with a really radical ideology”.<br /><br /> Later, he travelled to Arbil, capital of the Kurdistan semi-autonomous region in the north. <br /><br /> President Barack Obama began sending non-combatant troops back to Iraq in the summer for the first time since US forces withdrew in 2011.<br /><br /> About 1,400 US troops are now in Iraq. Earlier this month, the President approved sending up to 1,500 more troops there.<br /><br /> While they help Iraqi and Kurdish forces battle extremists on the ground, airstrikes are continuing against ISIL which has captured large swathes of territory in both Iraq and Syria. <br /><br /> The threat could be bigger than first thought however.<br /><br /> Kurdish sources in Sunday's British press suggest that ISIL has an army of at least 200,000 fighters – up to eight times bigger than foreign intelligence estimates.
