There were four visiting Congressmen at the US Embassy in Baghdad, but the one standing closest to me also had a friendly smile. “So, which one are you?” I asked. “I’m Barack - pleased to meet you,” Mr Obama said.

That was on January 7, 2006, when the US senator first visited Iraq on a fact-finding mission that attracted zero fanfare. Two and a half years on, the contrast is staggering, with the world’s media fixated on his return.

Details of Mr Obama’s arrival, where he will go and whom he will meet are top secret. Access to him is also tightly controlled, making the chances of a second handshake slim.

Everything was so much easier the first time around.

An e-mail appeared inviting members of the press in Baghdad to meet Mr Obama as well as fellow Congressmen Evan Bayh and Harold Ford of the Democratic Party and the Republican senator Kit Bond. Besides The Times, five other journalists - all American - showed up. They were terribly excited at the chance to meet this Obama fellow.

“He’s going to be the next President of the United States,” one said. The rest nodded as we were ushered into a meeting room at the embassy.

The Congressmen, who were on a two-day trip to Iraq, had already met various Iraqi and US officials. Each talked about his impressions of the situation - which at the time was dire. Earlier that day the American journalist Jill Carroll had been kidnapped at gunpoint by Sunni Arab insurgents, while sectarian violence was mounting.

The message the group conveyed was that Congress was unlikely to keep pouring money into Iraq unless it saw more progress over the next six months, such as the formation of a unified government. “The analogy I would use is that it is going to be hard to convince American taxpayers to pour water into a leaky bucket,” Mr Obama said. Thirty months later much has changed, for Iraq and for Mr Obama.

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