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Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom President-elect Barack Obama has asked to stay on in his current position, today suggested he is open to speeding up U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center, two of Obama's stated goals.

As the Associated Press reports, Gates said in a press conference that military commanders are now looking at how they might pull troops out in accordance with the 16-month timetable pushed by Obama during his presidential campaign.

"Commanders are already looking at what the implications of that are in terms of the potential for accelerating the drawdown and in terms of how we meet our obligations to the Iraqis," Gates said.

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Following Tuesday night's "CBS Evening News" exclusive and separate interviews with Sens. Obama and McCain, responses to questions on foreign affairs that each candidate gave to Katie Couric are being parsed on both sides of the political spectrum.
(Click here for the full transcript of the Obama interview and here for the full McCain interview)

On Wednesday morning, the Republican National Committee sent around this video clip, which shows Obama at a primary debate in February explaining that a Senate committee he chaired had not held oversight hearings on Afghanistan because he had been devoting the bulk of his time to campaigning. The clip then cuts to a segment of last night's CBS News interview, in which Obama seemed to change his explanation for why he hadn't held hearings on Afghanistan.

"Actually the subcommittee that I chair is the European subcommittee, and any issues related to Afghanistan were always dealt with in the full committee, precisely because it's so important," Obama told Couric. "That's not a matter that you would deal with in a subcommittee setting."

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After The Drudge Report broke the news that The New York Times had rejected an opinion piece submitted by John McCain on his views on the military situation in Iraq, the newspaper issued the following statement:

"It is standard procedure on our Op-Ed page, and that of other newspapers, to go back and forth with an author on his or her submission. We look forward to publishing Senator McCain's views in our paper just as we have in the past. We have published at least seven Op-Ed pieces by Senator McCain since 1996. The New York Times endorsed Senator McCain as the Republican candidate in the presidential primaries. We take his views very seriously."

The New York Times' rejection of the McCain piece on Friday came less than a week after it published an op-ed on Iraq penned by presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

McCain's submission to the Times touted the success of the troop surge and also heavily criticizes Obama, according to The Drudge Report.

"Senator Obama has said that he would consult our commanders on the ground and Iraqi leaders, but he did no such thing before releasing his 'plan for Iraq.,'" McCain wrote. "Perhaps that’s because he doesn’t want to hear what they have to say."

So far, so good for Barack Obama in his much-hyped world tour. Great pictures of the candidate meeting with U.S. troops, walking with foreign leaders and receiving the kind of media attention usually reserved for a president, not a presidential candidate.

He even got a gift from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who seemed to endorse Obama’s 16-month timeline for withdrawing U.S. troops in an interview with a German magazine before attempting to walk back from such outright backing. And Gen. David Patraeus added more weight to Obama’s proposals to shift more resources to Afghanistan when he said there were indications that al-Qaeda is making that country its primary battleground.

It’s enough to make a candidate start to feel pretty confident about his prospects this November. While Obama’s interview with CBS News’ Lara Logan made headlines for the candidate’s characterization of the situation in Afghanistan as “precarious” and “urgent,” there was a new tone the candidate.

When asked by Logan whether the trip was designed to quell concerns about his lack of foreign policy experience, Obama sounded like someone thinking about a return trip on Air Force One. “The objective of this trip was to have substantive discussions with people like President Karzai or Prime Minister Maliki or President Sarkozy or others who I expect to be dealing with over the next eight to ten years,” Obama said.

“It's important for me to have a relationship with them early, that I start listening to them now, getting a sense of what their interests and concerns are, because one of the shifts in foreign policy that I want to execute as president is giving the world a clear message that America intends to continue to show leadership, but our style of leadership is going to be less unilateral, that we're going to see our role as building partnerships around the world that are of mutual interest to the parties involved. And I think this gives me a head start in that process.”

Who could blame the campaign for thinking ahead a little. While he clings to a somewhat narrow lead in national polls, just about every other metric is leaning heavily in his favor. If this week’s dress rehearsal on the world stage concludes as successfully as it has begun, it could inspire even more confidence from the candidate with little on the horizon to change the momentum until fall.

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A new CBS News/New York Times will be out at 6:30 this evening but we have an early look at some of the numbers.

The poll shows that while Americans have been pessimistic about the direction of the country in general and the state of the economy in particular, they are increasingly positive about the way things are going in Iraq.

Just seven percent say the war in Iraq is going very well but 45 percent now say it is going at least somewhat well. This marks the most positive assessment of the war since January, 2006, and a 10 point upswing since just last month. But 51 percent say the war is going at least somewhat badly. In June, just 35 percent said the war was going somewhat well while 62 percent said it was going badly.

Still, 59 percent of Americans say that the U.S. should have stayed out of Iraq altogether, a number slightly up from April when 57 percent said so. Thirty six percent say that the U.S. did the right thing by going to war with Iraq.

Barack Obama’s campaign has been trying to paint a possible John McCain presidency as a third Bush term and that message may be resonating with some voters, particularly on Iraq. Most (78 percent) think McCain will continue President Bush’s policies in Iraq. Just 17 percent say McCain will not continue those policies.

For more on the CBS News/New York Times poll, tune in to the CBS Evening News tonight and see the full results at CBSNews.com at 6:30.

On the day Barack Obama is set to give what his campaign bills as a major foreign policy speech – and just a few days before his international tour – the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign has released a new television ad, "America’s Leadership."

The 30-second spot will air in Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

The spot paints Obama as a pragmatist willing to work across the aisle to eliminate the most pressing national security threats. It spotlights his work with Republican Senator Richard Lugar "to help lock down loose nuclear weapons."

"We are a beacon of light around the world," Obama is shown saying at a town hall as the spot opens. "At least that’s what we can be again. That’s what we should be again."

Then Obama speaks directly into the camera: "The single most important national security threat that we face," he says, "is nuclear weapons falling into the hands of terrorists."

A black-and-white photograph of weapons appears onscreen, followed by a shot of Obama and Lugar.

"What I did was reach out to Senator Dick Lugar, a Republican, to help lock down loose nuclear weapons," Obama says. "We have to lead the entire world to reduce that threat."

The ad concludes with Obama at the Town Hall meeting.

"We can restore America’s leadership in the world," he says.

Watch it:

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska will join Barack Obama on his upcoming trip to Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reports.

According to CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic, the Obama campaign will not comment on the paper's report but did not deny its validity.

Hagel, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, has been mentioned as a possible vice presidential pick for Obama and has said that he would consider an offer from the presumptive Democratic nominee.

The Nebraska senator is currently ranked #4 on the CBSNews.com Democratic VP hot sheet.

“Don’t be confused. I will bring the Iraq war to a close when I am president of the United States of America.” That was Barack Obama, forcefully pushing back against growing questions about his commitment to the anti-war position that helped propel him to the Democratic nomination.

His suggestion last week that he was continuing to “refine” his position on the war was the latest in a series of shifts on a variety of issues which have befuddled and angered his political base. Thousands of his own supporters launched a protest on the official Obama Web site after he announced his support for the Senate compromise on FISA, for example. And conservatives have crowed about his seeming support for Supreme Court decisions on gun control and the death penalty that put him in the same camp as Justice Scalia.

Most of those semi-minor shifts could be forgiven by Democratic activists smelling a November victory in the air as attempts to solidify his position among centrists and inoculate his candidacy against the Republican attacks to come. But not when it comes to the war in Iraq. That’s an issue on which progressive activists have little wiggle room.

In 2006, Democratic candidates rode a wave of anti-war sentiment to a Majority in the House, ending nearly six years of Republican rule in government. Hopes were high among those who had organized, blogged and raised money for candidates whose primary goal was to bring the war to an end by any means necessary.

For their efforts, anti-war activists were rewarded not with a reduction of the war in Iraq but an escalation. Democratic leaders have at times talked tough about ending the conflict but have made no serious effort to cut funding or force a change in the administration’s overall policy. Now the party’s presidential candidate, who reminded primary voters at every turn that he had opposed the war from the beginning and would end it within 16 months of taking office, seemed to be backing away.

That could be a fudge too far. Obama is in a delicate position on Iraq as he plans a trip there this summer. If he doesn’t talk to military leaders on the ground and at least appear to be open minded, what’s the point of going there at all? He has in the past said that as president, he would dictate the broad strategic goals, leading to the assumption that he would have very little use of his general’s assessments of how the war is going. He’s also up against the reality that even if he insists on an end to the war, it may take longer than 16 months to get there.

Nevertheless, it’s an issue that lies at the heart of Obama’s candidacy. He argued in the primaries that judgment, not experience, is the key to leadership. Looking at his forceful push-back on the Iraq issue and charges of flip-flops, he may have slightly misjudged how little wiggle room there is on the war.

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"We're winning" the war in Iraq, according to a new ad from an independent group called Vets For Freedom.

The group is spending $1.5 million to run the spot, which closely echoes the rhetoric of presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, largely in swing states.

"Casualties are at an all-time low," says one of the eight veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan who appears in the spot. "Al Qaeda in Iraq is decimated," he adds, as the words "essentially defeated" appear on the screen.

"These are the facts – they can't be ignored," those appearing in the ad continue. "We changed strategy in Iraq, and the surge worked. Now that's change we can believe in."

"We need to finish the job, no matter who is President," they conclude.

McCain has been a strong proponent of the "surge" strategy, and has promised to largely continue the present Iraq policy if elected; rival Barack Obama has vowed to begin bringing troops home soon after he takes office.

Vets For Freedom cannot legally coordinate with the McCain campaign, and chairman Pete Hegseth said the group was not acting on the presumptive GOP nominee's behalf.

Hegseth told the Washington Post that the spot was running in the swing states of Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia because citizens in those states have a "heightened awareness" of important issues due to their swing-state status.

"It's not an attack on anybody. We're not taking on any presidential candidates," he added.

Watch it:

A partisan back-and-forth is raging today over comments John McCain made this morning on "Today."

Host Matt Lauer asked McCain if he now has "a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq."

"No, but that's not too important," McCain replied. "What's important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That's all fine...the key to it is we don't want any more Americans in harm's way."

Democrats quickly seized on the "not too important" part of the quote.

Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Joseph R. Biden Jr. – a potential running mate for Barack Obama – said this: “Senator McCain’s comment is evidence that he is totally out of touch with the needs of our troops and the national security needs of our nation. I think many of our brave soldiers and their families would disagree that it’s ‘not too important’ when they come home."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also weighed in: “Senator McCain’s statement that it is ‘not too important’ when U.S. troops are redeployed from Iraq is yet another indication how out of touch he is with the effect the war in Iraq is having on the readiness of our military."

As did House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel: “When asked this morning about American troops coming home from Iraq, John McCain said ‘that’s not too important.’ Senator McCain, to the men and women who are serving their second, third, or even fourth deployment in Iraq, and to their families, it is incredibly important."

And former Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, on a conference call with two Obama foreign policy advisors, said "It is unbelievably out of touch and inconsistent with the needs and concerns of Americans. To them it’s the most important thing in the world when they come home, and it’s the most important thing in the world that we have a commander in chief who understands how they come home."

This afternoon, McCain's camp pushed back against the Democratic offensive on a conference call.

"To put it mildly I am disappointed by these reflexive attacks on what Senator McCain said this morning on the Today Show," said Sen. Joe Lieberman. "Because if you read the paragraph and not take a single clause out of context it is very obvious what John McCain is saying and it is consistent with everything he said along the way."

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