Baghdad: June 26, 2009 - Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken to calling the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq’s cities by next Tuesday a “great victory,” a repulsion of foreign occupiers he compares to the rebellion against British troops in 1920.

And the Americans are going along with it, symbolically and substantively.

American commanders have hewed far more closely to the June 30 deadline for withdrawing combat forces from Iraq’s cities than expected only a few weeks ago, according to American and Iraqi officials.

They have closed outposts — even in Baghdad and still-troubled Mosul in the north — that they had initially lobbied the Iraqis to keep open, having concluded, the officials said, that pressing the case would be counterproductive given the political significance that Mr. Maliki had given the deadline.

The day itself has been declared a national holiday, though it is not yet clear whether Iraq will hold the “feast and festivals” he recently promised.

American and Iraqi officials acknowledge the risks — to Mr. Maliki’s political position and to Iraqis’ safety.

On Wednesday, four days after the last American base in Sadr City closed, a bomb hidden on a motorcycle cart killed at least 76 people and wounded more than 150 in a market in the neighborhood. On Thursday, at least seven bombs exploded around the country in what appeared to be a message from extremists days before the deadline.

A great deal of Mr. Maliki’s political support rests on the fact that violence has declined since the carnage of 2006 and 2007, that he has rebuilt the security forces, that he has presided over the beginning of the end of the American war. He rarely mentions any American role in the improved security in Iraq — though 130,000 American troops remain in the country.

“We will not ask them to intervene in combat operations related to maintaining public order,” he said in an interview with Le Monde published last week. “It is finished.”

With the deadline now only days away, a drastically reshaped American military posture has emerged, largely because of Mr. Maliki’s insistence.

Bases built over months and years have been dismantled, often in weeks. The once ubiquitous presence of American armored vehicles on Baghdad’s streets has largely ended. More