Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has long opposed timetables for troop withdrawals and has expressed support for an open-ended commitment of troops to Iraq, if necessary.

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AP / MARK SCHIEFELBEIN

WASHINGTON — As he prepares for his first trip to Iraq as a Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama is defending his 16-month timetable for pulling out U.S. combat forces, reasoning in part that it will permit a shift of troops to Afghanistan, which he depicted yesterday as the proper focus of the nation’s counterterrorism efforts.

But Obama’s upcoming foreign tour and a war policy essay in The New York Times have also drawn attention to his stance on Iraq, with a top Senate ally of Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., calling it an “unbelievable, brazen attempt by a politician to rewrite history.”

Sen. Joseph Biden Jr., D-Del., an Obama supporter, retorted that “John McCain has no notion of what’s going on” with Iraq’s contesting ethic and religious factions. “He doesn’t get the fact that in fact there is no reasonable prospect of there being a strong central government located in Baghdad.”

The escalation of the verbal battle between the McCain and Obama camps underscored the fact that, despite this year’s spell of relative quiet in Iraq, only the ailing economy overshadows the war as a presidential campaign issue.

A look at Obama’s campaign statements and his voting record suggests, meanwhile, that he has long favored troop withdrawals from Iraq at a faster pace than one of his traveling companions for the upcoming tour of Iraq and Afghanistan, Sen. Jack Reed, has generally counseled.

The latest act in the political drama began when Obama revealed before the congressional break over Independence Day that he would visit Iraq and Afghanistan this summer to confer with U.S. military and civilian leaders and their counterparts in the two nations. Obama appeared to some listeners at both ends of the political spectrum to soften his longstanding troop withdrawal plan when he said talks with military commanders could prompt him to “refine” it.

Obama quickly gathered reporters to clarify his position. Upon taking office next year, “I would bring our troops home at a pace of one-to-two brigades per month,” Obama said. “And at that pace we would have our combat troops out in 16 months,” or by the early summer of 2010. “That position has not changed. I have not equivocated on that position. I am not searching for maneuvering room with respect to that position.”

Iraq jumped back into the campaign spotlight with the weekend announcement that Obama had chosen Reed and Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb. — both Army veterans and strenuous critics of the Bush war policy — to join him on his tour of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yesterday morning, Obama published a new explanation of his war policy on The New York Times opinion page. He has scheduled a speech on Iraq for today in Washington. McCain, meanwhile, plans an address on Afghanistan policy for Thursday.

Obama drew on two recent developments — rising violence in Afghanistan and the Iraqi government’s desire for U.S. troop withdrawals — in an essay that called for shifting two combat brigades, or 9,000 to 10,000 troops, to Afghanistan.

Obama reiterated his belief in the 16-month withdrawal plan. But he appeared to leave room for revisions after consultation with commanders, saying, “we would inevitably need to make tactical adjustments.” He said he would leave a “residual force” of unspecified size for counterterrorism, self-protection and training Iraqi forces — much the same formula that Reed has advocated for more than three years in legislation that has been the leading Senate Democratic formula for policy change in Iraq.

Obama said that since the surge began, “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-Qaida — greatly weakening its effectiveness.” But he said, “the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true,” including the Iraqi government’s failure to reach “political accommodation.”

Obama and his camp have stressed the view that his plan for Iraq has been consistent but — like McCain and many other legislators — he has made changes over the years. In 2006, Obama joined a large, bipartisan Senate majority in rejecting a measure by Sen. John F. Kerry to force the withdrawal of combat troops from Iraq by the spring of 2007. Instead, he supported a nonbinding call by Reed and Sen. Carl Levin. D-Mich., to change the mission by beginning to withdraw an unspecified number of troops.

Last year, Obama opposed efforts by Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., to withhold approval of war funds as a way of forcing withdrawals. But Obama supported Feingold on a key test vote of a measure that would have removed all combat forces by the spring of 2008. Graham charged yesterday that Obama would thus have killed the surge before it had a chance to work.

Obama developed the 16-month withdrawal plan later, as a presidential candidate. Reed said last weekend that he and Obama are “not very far apart” on that point but Reed, who has generally opposed deadlines for troop withdrawals, did not directly answer the question of whether he supports the 16-month plan. Still, Reed said that various circumstances — including the Army’s own troop rotation plans and the need for beefed up forces in Afghanistan — make such a plan possible.

McCain, for his part, has long opposed timetables for troop withdrawals and has expressed support for an open-ended commitment of troops to Iraq, if necessary. He has compared that to the U.S. deployment of forces in South Korea since the 1950s.

Biden ridiculed that analogy in a conference call with reporters yesterday, saying it does not fit the reality of the transnational struggle against terrorism.

However people view the decision to invade, said Graham, “It is clear to any objective observer that what happened in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad became a central struggle in the war on terror.” He told reporters it’s also clear that President Bush’s 2007 surge of extra troops into Iraq has won dramatic security gains. He criticized for refusing to repudiate his opposition to the troop surge while acknowledging the reductions in violence secured by the additional troops.

McCain foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, portrayed Obama as scrambling to “protect his flank” in an election while the Republican senator from Arizona risked his career to support an unpopular strategy to turn the tide in Iraq. “Senator McCain said he would rather lose an election than lose a war and see the nation lose a war,” said Scheunemann. “Senator Obama seems to think losing a war will help him win an election.”

Obama foreign policy aide Susan Rice attributed the harsh rhetoric to “the fact that John McCain has been wrong on Iraq from the very beginning.”

“That kind of old-school fear mongering is exactly what the American people are tired of and they won’t be fooled by,” she said.

Meanwhile yesterday, Reed deflected new questions about the possibility that Obama will consider him as his running mate. Speaking at Aspen Aerogels, an East Providence defense contracting company where he appeared with Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy, Reed said he was flattered by the idea but has no interest in the position. “I believe I have the best job in the world, and I’m going to try to keep it,” said Reed, who is standing for election to a third Senate term.

Journal staff writer Tom Mooney contributed to this report.

jmulligan@belo-dc.com