Barack Obama's battle to get out of Afghanistan

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and clarifications column, Friday 24 September 2010 This story said that Barack Obama had been alone in the US Senate in opposing the Iraq war. Obama was some way from reaching the senate when, in October 2002, it voted on whether to authorise President George W Bush to use military force against Iraq. Twenty-three senators voted a

[Scatterbrain]

Later, he would tell aides: "This needs to be a plan about how we're going to hand it off and get out of Afghanistan … everything we're doing has to be focused on how we're going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint."