“The end of the story hasn’t been told, and I don’t think can be forecast,’’ Keating, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a phone interview.
His weeklong trip with four Republican colleagues through five countries ended yesterday in Germany.
Before he left, Keating visited soldiers injured in the rocket attack.
Some members of Congress regularly cycle through Iraq and Afghanistan, but Keating’s visit to the two theaters of US military operations and Pakistan came at an unusual time.
He touched down amid a wave of violence in Iraq and on the cusp of an expected drawdown in Afghanistan. And his delegation visited Pakistan just weeks after the operation that killed Osama bin Laden last month; Senator John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, traveled there shortly after the raid.
Passing first through Kuwait, the delegation with Keating arrived in Baghdad last Sunday and dined with soldiers that night, including some from Massachusetts.
“I think there’s a perception that it’s safe [in Iraq],’’ Keating said. “I think it’s fair to say more than anything that Iraq’s in the transition stage, but there is still violence there, and we saw it.’’
After Iraq, he traveled to Pakistan, where officials told the visiting delegation of the difficulty that the unannounced raid against bin Laden had caused for the Pakistanis, because the operation took place without the knowledge or participation of the government.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was among the officials who met with the delegation.
“They want to know, to share in, what our military objectives are. They clearly weren’t informed ahead of time, and they thought that caused great problems in terms of confidence that people have in their own military,’’ Keating said.
That difficulty has deepened in recent days after paramilitary troopers shot a teenage boy.
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