CHICAGO — The call by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for a timetable for the removal of American troops from Iraq presents an enormous opportunity. We should seize this moment to begin the phased redeployment of combat troops that I have long advocated, and that is needed for long-term success in Iraq and the security interests of the United States.

The differences on Iraq in this campaign are deep. Unlike Senator John McCain, I opposed the war in Iraq before it began, and would end it as president. I believed it was a grave mistake to allow ourselves to be distracted from the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban by invading a country that posed no imminent threat and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. Since then, more than 4,000 Americans have died and we have spent nearly $1 trillion. Our military is overstretched. Nearly every threat we face — from Afghanistan to Al Qaeda to Iran — has grown.

In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness.

But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true. The strain on our military has grown, the situation in Afghanistan has deteriorated and we’ve spent nearly $200 billion more in Iraq than we had budgeted. Iraq’s leaders have failed to invest tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues in rebuilding their own country, and they have not reached the political accommodation that was the stated purpose of the surge.

The good news is that Iraq’s leaders want to take responsibility for their country by negotiating a timetable for the removal of American troops. Meanwhile, Lt. Gen. James Dubik, the American officer in charge of training Iraq’s security forces, estimates that the Iraqi Army and police will be ready to assume responsibility for security in 2009.

Only by redeploying our troops can we press the Iraqis to reach comprehensive political accommodation and achieve a successful transition to Iraqis’ taking responsibility for the security and stability of their country. Instead of seizing the moment and encouraging Iraqis to step up, the Bush administration and Senator McCain are refusing to embrace this transition — despite their previous commitments to respect the will of Iraq’s sovereign government. They call any timetable for the removal of American troops “surrender,” even though we would be turning Iraq over to a sovereign Iraqi government.

But this is not a strategy for success — it is a strategy for staying that runs contrary to the will of the Iraqi people, the American people and the security interests of the United States. That is why, on my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war.

As I’ve said many times, we must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in. We can safely redeploy our combat brigades at a pace that would remove them in 16 months. That would be the summer of 2010 — two years from now, and more than seven years after the war began. After this redeployment, a residual force in Iraq would perform limited missions: going after any remnants of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, protecting American service members and, so long as the Iraqis make political progress, training Iraqi security forces. That would not be a precipitous withdrawal.

In carrying out this strategy, we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments. As I have often said, I would consult with commanders on the ground and the Iraqi government to ensure that our troops were redeployed safely, and our interests protected. We would move them from secure areas first and volatile areas later. We would pursue a diplomatic offensive with every nation in the region on behalf of Iraq’s stability, and commit $2 billion to a new international effort to support Iraq’s refugees.

Ending the war is essential to meeting our broader strategic goals, starting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda has a safe haven. Iraq is not the central front in the war on terrorism, and it never has been. As Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently pointed out, we won’t have sufficient resources to finish the job in Afghanistan until we reduce our commitment to Iraq.

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there. I would not hold our military, our resources and our foreign policy hostage to a misguided desire to maintain permanent bases in Iraq.

In this campaign, there are honest differences over Iraq, and we should discuss them with the thoroughness they deserve. Unlike Senator McCain, I would make it absolutely clear that we seek no presence in Iraq similar to our permanent bases in South Korea, and would redeploy our troops out of Iraq and focus on the broader security challenges that we face. But for far too long, those responsible for the greatest strategic blunder in the recent history of American foreign policy have ignored useful debate in favor of making false charges about flip-flops and surrender.

It’s not going to work this time. It’s time to end this war."

God, Republicans are saps. They think that they’re running against some academic liberal who wouldn’t wear flag pins on his lapel, whose wife isn’t proud of America and who went to some liberationist church where the pastor damned his own country. They think they’re running against some naïve university-town dreamer, the second coming of Adlai Stevenson.

But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is Dr. Barack, the high-minded, Niebuhr-quoting speechifier who spent this past winter thrilling the Scarlett Johansson set and feeling the fierce urgency of now. But then on the other side, there’s Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who’d throw you under the truck for votes.

This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator. He’s the only politician of our lifetime who is underestimated because he’s too intelligent. He speaks so calmly and polysyllabically that people fail to appreciate the Machiavellian ambition inside.

But he’s been giving us an education, for anybody who cares to pay attention. Just try to imagine Mister Rogers playing the agent Ari in “Entourage” and it all falls into place.

Back when he was in the Illinois State Senate, Dr. Barack could have taken positions on politically uncomfortable issues. But Fast Eddie Obama voted “present” nearly 130 times. From time to time, he threw his voting power under the truck.

Dr. Barack said he could no more disown the Rev. Jeremiah Wright than disown his own grandmother. Then the political costs of Rev. Wright escalated and Fast Eddie Obama threw Wright under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have been a workhorse senator. But primary candidates don’t do tough votes, so Fast Eddie Obama threw the workhorse duties under the truck.

Dr. Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations. Fast Eddie Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.

And then on Thursday, Fast Eddie Obama had his finest hour. Barack Obama has worked on political reform more than any other issue. He aspires to be to political reform what Bono is to fighting disease in Africa. He’s spent much of his career talking about how much he believes in public financing. In January 2007, he told Larry King that the public-financing system works. In February 2007, he challenged Republicans to limit their spending and vowed to do so along with them if he were the nominee. In February 2008, he said he would aggressively pursue spending limits. He answered a Midwest Democracy Network questionnaire by reminding everyone that he has been a longtime advocate of the public-financing system.

But Thursday, at the first breath of political inconvenience, Fast Eddie Obama threw public financing under the truck. In so doing, he probably dealt a death-blow to the cause of campaign-finance reform. And the only thing that changed between Thursday and when he lauded the system is that Obama’s got more money now.

And Fast Eddie Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style. He did it with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa’s final steps to sainthood.

The media and the activists won’t care (they were only interested in campaign-finance reform only when the Republicans had more money). Meanwhile, Obama’s money is forever. He’s got an army of small donors and a phalanx of big money bundlers, including, according to The Washington Post, Kenneth Griffin of the Citadel Investment Group; Kirk Wager, a Florida trial lawyer; James Crown, a director of General Dynamics; and Neil Bluhm, a hotel, office and casino developer.

I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life, all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside.

All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics."

The charges:

1. Obama voted present- He voted present about 2% of the time. This fantasy that you get away with something by voting present is nonsense. Given the heat he's taken for it, the really politically expedient thing to do would've been just to vote. You'll notice nobody has made an issue of any of the 3800+ votes that he did vote yes or no. Would you rather have someone who voted present 2% or voted incorrectly 2% (or much more) of the time? Most of the votes were probably political but as he claims, politics isn't bean bag, so why should Obama have voted for/against bills that were being used as wedge issues just to play into the opposition's game? Also, on other bills, he clearly explained that he voted present because there was a specific issue with part of the bill that he wanted rectified before approving it. This is a hell of a lot better than someone who votes for things despite problematic loopholes.

2. Jeremiah Wright- I know everyone thinks this is political expediency but I don't think it was. Obama's reaction was perfectly understandable given the slow increase in Wright's ability to be tolerated. First he was just controversial so Obama said okay not a good idea to speak at my campaign kickoff. Perfectly reasonable. Then his more outrageous statements came out and Obama said he denounces those statements but Wright has done a lot of good and he's not going to allow a few statements to wipe out 20 years of good things Wright has done. Perfectly reasonable. Then came April where Wright himself went in front of the national media and behaved like a fool and decided that he wanted to characterize himself as a nutcase so Obama said that if this guy wants to allow himself to be portrayed this way, then he longer feels the need to defend him and is cutting him off. Perfectly reasonable. Was it politically expedient? Yes, but real political expediency would have been to cut this guy off from the start and remove every figure from his life that could ever ever be construed as anything but bland All-American apple pie. I don't see anything wrong with what he did given that the "facts on the ground" continued to change so his position rationally evolved.

3. "Workhorse senator"- Workhorse in what way? Congress in its present form is a joke. People who get things passed are people with seniority. Hillary Clinton apparently worked extremely hard during her 1st term in the Senate and what accomplishments does she have to her name? Nothing but a bad vote on Iraq. Congress doesn't reward hard work and that's exactly why Obama needs to be President so he doesn't have to wait til he's 75 to pass any major legislation.

4. Town halls- Oh yes, what an olive branch John McCain offered with those town halls. That was a purely selfish offer. McCain knows full well that town halls are his best forum and he's awful on the teleprompter and can't draw large crowds. By forcing Obama onto his turf, he could bog down Obama in preparation for town halls and use his best format in an attempt to tamp down Obama's huge crowds and enthusiasm. It was nothing but a political ploy and David Brooks acts like McCain was doing out of respect for the political process. I guess Brooks also believes John McCain is seriously hurt that Obama didn't take public financing and it has nothing to do with the huge money advantage Obama has without it. If McCain cares so much about more debates between the two of them, why hasn't he accepted Obama's plan for 5 debates?

5. Public financing- I don't think anyone doubts that Obama didn't reject it for at least partially selfish reasons but McCain is certainly not innocent in this the way he's been gaming the system and frankly it's stupid to insist that Obama kneecap himself in the midst of the election. That's why we're so insistent on following the Constitution, because it's a lot easier to work under pre-established rules than make up new ones on the fly when people are forced to pick between self-interest and principle. For McCain to call this a big trust issue is nonsense. First of all, he would do it in a heartbeat if the situation were reversed and more importantly, Obama isn't hurting real people by making this reversal. McCain flip-flopping on a long term presence in Iraq is 10,000 times more important than Obama not taking public financing but which one are we talking about? I support public financing but it's setting the ethics threshold a little too high to expect Obama to voluntarily forfeit his fundraising advantage in the middle of a very important election. Given that Obama has made ethics a major part of his record, I don't think this is any indication of the same thing happening when he's president. In fact, there is a good chance he'll bring about reform so future candidates won't be put in this ethical limbo.