After calling for Middle East peace and saying he believed in a dialogue with Islam, President Barack Obama ended his first international tour with a surprise trip to Iraq.

Obama took off from Istanbul and, instead of heading home to Washington, traveled to Iraq for a quick visit. He was due to meet U.S. commanders and troops and will speak to Iraqi leaders by telephone. Poor weather in the area caused him to scratch plans to take a helicopter to meet Iraqi leaders in person.

The White House said Obama — who won strong support during the presidential campaign for vowing to wind down the unpopular war in Iraq — would tell Iraqi leaders that there are political solutions to their challenges.

After his foray into foreign policy, Obama will be returning to Washington to deal with the recession at home. But he should be coming home in good spirits — recent polls show Americans are more optimistic about the economy and the direction of their country since Obama took office.

The latest New York Times/CBS News poll showed two-thirds of those surveyed approved of Obama’s overall job performance. Thirty-nine percent said they felt the country was going in the right direction — the highest since Feb. 2005 at the beginning of former President George W. Bush’s first term.

The big question: Did Obama have time to watch the men’s NCAA title basketball game on Monday night? If he didn’t see it live, maybe he’ll see a recording on Air Force One on his way back home. He’ll be sure to be happy to discover that his prediction was right. The North Carolina Tar Heels did indeed go all the way to win the title in a 89-72 rout of Michigan State.

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Photo credits: REUTERS/Umit Bektas (Obama waves as he boards Air Force One in Turkey) ; REUTERS/Rebecca Cook (University of North Carolina Tar Heels’ Dany Green holds up NCAA championship trophy)

It’s on front pages, news shows and all over the Web: outrage at the bailout of AIG, the troubled insurance giant that — so far — has gotten $173 billion in U.S. taxpayer money and has given out $165 million in bonuses to the very executives who brought the company to its knees.

A quick Web search of “AIG outrage” for March 2009 gets 190,000 hits, ranging from Al Jazeera (”Outrage against AIG set to mount”) to USA Today (”AIG bonus outrage plays Treasury officials for saps”). Part of the outrage stems from the Obama team’s contention that there’s nothing they can legally do to stop these bonus payments.

Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who heads the House Financial Services Committee, came up with a plan in an interview on NBC’s “Today”: AIG’s execs can keep their bonuses but they don’t have to keep their jobs. “These people may have a right to their bonuses but they don’t have a right to their jobs foever,” is how Frank put it.

At the White House, President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner are set to talk with small business owners about a plan to make it easier for them to borrow money.

Outside the Beltway, the mood turns from outrage to madness — the college basketball kind of madness that comes in March when the NCAA unveils its tournament field. The national championship is April 6 in Detroit.

Photo credits:
The American International Group building in New York, March 2, 2009 file photo. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/Files

Duke’s guard Jon Scheyer (R) passes under the basket as Florida State guard Jordan DeMercy defends during men’s NCAA basketball action in Atlanta, Georgia March 15, 2009. REUTERS/Tami Chappell

  CHARLESTON, W.Va. - For many U.S. sports fans, March is the time to obsess over men’s college basketball and the science of “bracketology,” in which fans predict the winner of each game in the 64-team, end-of-season tournament. 

For others, of course, bracketology remains a mystery.
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama released his “brackets” on Thursday, reinforcing his credentials as a regular, sports-lovin’ guy who shoots hoops in his spare time on the campaign trail as he runs for the Democratic nomination for U.S. president.

According to Obama, expect North Carolina, Kansas, Pittsburgh and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), to reach the final four as semi-finalists.

Team Obama even put his complete picks on its Web site.

Students of politics and sport might note that two of the teams Obama selected are in states yet to vote and polls put him slightly ahead of his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, in North Carolina, the team he picked to beat UCLA in the final.

But there’s another set of brackets in which Obama has an interest.

The Democratic nominee will face presumptive Republican nominee John McCain in November’s general election and at a sports bar in Charleston, West Virginia, Obama outlined a potential November match-up on a supporter’s bracketology card.

“I put McCain on one side, Obama on the other in the final,” he said, adding: “Obama wins it.”

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- Photo credit: Reuters/John Sommers II (Obama speaks to supporters during a  campaign stop in Charleston, West Virginia)