Senator John McCain declared on Thursday that most American troops would be home from Iraq by 2013 and that the nation would be a functioning democracy with only “spasmodic” episodes of violence. The comments were a striking departure from his usual refusal to set a date for American withdrawal.

In a speech in the heart of Ohio, a major general election battleground, Mr. McCain set forth a sweeping, extraordinarily positive vision of what the world would look like in 2013, when, he said, he would have been in the White House for four years reports the New York Times.

The remarks, which offered no proposals for how he would achieve that vision, were an effort by Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, to define himself and the rationale of his candidacy to voters before he has a single Democratic rival who will try to do it for him.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom,” Mr. McCain said at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. “The Iraq war has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced.”

Read it here: McCain Vision Has Most G.I.’s Out of Iraq by 2013