COLUMBUS: Sen. John McCain declared Thursday that most U.S. 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 battleground state, McCain set forth a sweeping, extraordinarily positive vision of what the world will look like 2013, when, he said, he will have been in the White House for four years.

The remarks, which offered no proposals for how McCain would achieve that vision, were an effort by 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,'' 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.''

The United States, McCain added, ''maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.''

During his primary battle, McCain accused his rival Mitt Romney of setting a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq, even though Romney was merely speaking generally about private discussions among Iraqi and American leaders. Since then, McCain himself has come under fire from the Democrats for his support of the war and for offhand comments that he could envision a U.S. peacekeeping presence in Iraq for 100 years.

Despite his mention of a specific year for the end of U.S. combat operations, McCain and his aides strenuously argued afterward that his remarks should not be interpreted as promoting a timetable for withdrawal, even implicitly, and that he was simply projecting victory. ''I am certainly not putting a date on it,'' McCain said with exasperation during a circular, semantic debate in the back of his campaign bus.

McCain took issue when a reporter said the candidate had asked everyone to go along on a ''magic carpet ride'' to 2013. ''I don't think it has anything to do with fantasy,'' McCain said pointedly. ''I think it has everything to do with setting goals and achieving.''

In Afghanistan by 2013, McCain predicted, intelligence will have led to the capture or death of Osama bin Laden. In addition, he forecast that the threat from the Taliban will have been ''greatly reduced''; there will be no place in the world that al-Qaida can consider a haven; and ''there still has not been a major terrorist attack in the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.''

McCain also projected that ''concerted action'' by the world's democracies will have persuaded Russia and China to cooperate in persuading Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and North Korea to discontinue its own.