War Critics Question Obama's Fervor

"He's been there from the very beginning," said Tom Andrews, the national director of a group called Win Without War.

That beginning dates to the fall of 2002, when a group of 15 liberal activists in Chicago, furious about the Bush administration's intentions in Iraq, were organizing a rally to show opposition.

They were not sure who would show up, even in liberal Chicago, as many leading Democrats all over the country were strongly backing President Bush's war effort. Along with inviting a group of clergymen and more senior political figures in the city, such as Jesse L. Jackson, one of the activists, Bettylu Saltzman, called Obama.

Saltzman said she had not even heard Obama's position on the war but thought that, as one of the more liberal members of the state Senate, he would be against it. Dan Shomon, a political strategist who was advising Obama at the time, said Obama told him he was concerned he would be perceived as a pacifist if he attended the rally. Shomon told Obama it was important to speak on a core issue, particularly with longtime allies such as Saltzman organizing the event.

At the rally, Obama spoke after Jackson, and a story in the next day's Chicago Tribune did not even mention his appearance. But the fiery speech, much different from the unifying address he would give almost two years later at the Democratic convention, impressed many of the antiwar activists, who would become important backers of Obama's underdog Senate campaign.

"Bush's ratings were at an all-time high," said Marilyn Katz, another organizer of the rally, who is now one of the top fundraisers for Obama's 2008 campaign. But Obama "was willing to stand up and stake out a leadership position."

Obama has cited the speech as evidence of his leadership on difficult issues. "When I opposed this war before it began in 2002, I was about to run for the United States Senate, and I knew it wasn't the politically popular position," he told a crowd in Iowa in July. "But I believed then and still do that being a leader means that you'd better do what's right and leave the politics aside."

Elizabeth Edwards, whose husband has strong support among bloggers and in the antiwar movement despite having voted for the war when he was in the Senate, has questioned that notion. She told the Progressive magazine this summer that Obama is behaving in a "holier than thou" way on the war, arguing that his 2002 speech was "likely to be extraordinarily popular in his home district."

Ginsburg, the Chicago activist, said that "Barack was playing to a friendly crowd" and added: "Especially in Chicago, where all the Democrats are, that was not a particularly unpopular position at the time."

When the war started going badly, Obama continued to criticize it and attacked others in the Senate primary for not opposing it earlier. "I am the only candidate in this race to have publicly opposed the war in Iraq before it started," he said in February 2004.

But once he arrived in the Senate, after winning the primary and easily dispatching his Republican opponent, Obama did not emerge as a key voice on the war.

Days after Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) gave a teary speech in November 2005 calling for the immediate pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, Obama called for a phased reduction in troops but emphasized that he was against a timetable for withdrawal.