US Vice President Joe Biden has flown into Iraq to assure Iraqis the US is not abandoning them as it stops combat operations.
This a milestone in the seven and a half year war the Obama administration is trying to end.
The White House has said that Joe Biden will hold talks with Iraqi leaders amid a continuing political deadlock since March over forming the next government.
The impasse has turned the 31 August end of the US combat mission, and accompanying reduction in the US troop levels in Iraq to 50,000, into something of a gamble as political tensions and attacks by insurgents persist.
Meeting the 31 August deadline allows President Barack Obama to say he is fulfilling a pledge to end the war launched by his predecessor as Obama's fellow Democrats seek to retain control of Congress in elections in November.
The 50,000 U.S. soldiers remaining up to a full US withdrawal next year will train and assist Iraqi security forces as they battle Sunni Islamist insurgents and counter Shia militia.
Overall violence in Iraq has fallen sharply since the peak in 2006/07 of the sectarian slaughter unleashed after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, but levels of violence remain high.
Joe Biden, Obama's point man for Iraq, has flown into Baghdad five times since becoming vice president, usually when political squabbling threatens to escalate to crisis levels.
US officials have stressed they do not think they have a right to interfere too directly in Iraq's fledgling democracy.
