War Critics Question Obama's Fervor

"I'm not a military man," he told the Chicago Tribune. "I'm not running the war in Iraq."

In 2005 and 2006, Obama backed several bills that funded the Iraq war. In July 2006, when Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry (Mass.) and Russell Feingold (Wis.) pushed for a bill that would set a timetable to remove combat troops from Iraq by July 31, 2007, Obama, like Clinton, voted no.

Six months later, as his campaign got underway, Obama laid out a precise timetable for completing the withdrawal of combat troops. His aides say he took that position as he became more concerned with the situation in Iraq, particularly when the president proposed an increase in troops. Feingold said in June of his party's field of candidates: "Just about every one of them in the past mouthed that timelines are a bad idea -- all of that was just false, and now they are voting for them."

In November, Obama suggested that his position on Iraq was similar to Clinton's.

"It's not clear to me what differences we've had since I've been in the Senate," Obama told the New Yorker magazine. "I think what people might point to is our different assessments of the war in Iraq, although I'm always careful to say that I was not in the Senate, so perhaps the reason I thought it was such a bad idea was that I didn't have the benefit of U.S. intelligence. And, for those who did, it might have led to a different set of choices. . . . We were in different circumstances at that time: I was running for the U.S. Senate, she had to take a vote, and casting votes is always a difficult test."

Obama, like Clinton, now says the situation in Iraq is untenable and troops must start returning home as soon as possible, but he adds that withdrawal will take more than a year.

But unlike Clinton, he is not blaming Bush alone for the war.

"You know, I welcome all of the folks who have changed their position on the war," Obama said in Iowa on Wednesday. ". . . But if we have learned anything from Iraq, it is that the judgment that matters most is the judgment that is made first."