Barak Obama, Iraq

OBAMA FOR USA. Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has moved swiftly to reshape the war in Iraq, a war that he opposed from its start -- if not quite as quickly as he had pledged on the campaign trail. In February, he announced plans to withdraw all combat forces by August 2010, three months later than the 16-month withdrawal he had spoken of before the election. The move was in keeping with his overall goal of shifting the military's focus to the troubled war in Afghanistan.

Visiting Baghdad in early April, he told a cheering crowd of American troops that it was time for Iraqis "to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty." Later, with a hint of impatience in his words, he urged Iraq's leaders to unite the country's deeply divided ethnic and sectarian factions and to incorporate them all into government and security forces.

Mr. Obama's decision to withdraw from Iraq is not as sharp a change as it once seemed during the presidential campaign. Mr. Obama deferred to military commanders in agreeing to leave the vast bulk of American forces in place until next year, when a phased pullout would begin. And 50,000 troops would be left in place after August 2010. With violence already steeply reduced, Mr. Bush signed an agreement with Baghdad before leaving office to remove all American troops by the end of 2011, and former Bush advisers consider Mr. Obama's partial pullout a logical way station toward that goal.

The Pentagon's top Middle East adviser, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Colin Kahl, said in mid-April that insurgent attacks in Iraq would probably increase as American forces start to leave, but that there is no plan now to delay troop departures.