Levin lets Bush have it on Meet the Press

I was delighted to see Carl Levin taking a hard line against the Bush administration on Meet the Press this morning. Here's some of the transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Levin, Senator Warner says the president is open to an aggressive review and yet on Tuesday, this is what he said to he nation. Let’s play it and come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, Tuesday)

PRES. BUSH: But there’s one thing I’m not going to do. I’m not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: What’s your reaction to that?

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI): His stubbornness has continued. Some of his rhetoric has changed. He says he’s open to new ideas. (Coughs) Excuse me. He’ll even listen to Democrats. I—I even heard Steve Hadley say they’ll even listen to Democrats on the Hill. Boy, that would be a change. He’s been absolutely stubborn in his view that we are there—and this is his words just a few days ago, by the way, Tim—“We are going to stay in Iraq as long as Iraqis ask us to be there.” Now, that seems to me to be more of the same, “Stay the course. It’s up to the Iraqis how long we’re there.” It’s an absolute refusal to do what we all know, I think, just about everybody except the president, his wife and a few others who are very, very willing to say whatever he wants them to say.

We’ve got to tell the Iraqis it’s their responsibility. It’s their country. The prime minister of Iraq, Maliki, said something which has not been reported enough. He said the entire problem in Iraq is political. It’s not military. He said it’s the politicians who have the end to violence in Iraq. It’s a political problem in Iraq. It can’t be solved militarily. We’ve got to put pressure on the Iraqis to take responsibility, and the only way that that’s going to be done is if the open-ended commitment to Iraq of our troops is over. We got to end it. And the president, when he says we’re going to stay in Iraq as long as the Iraqis want us to stay, keeps that open-ended commitment, which takes the responsibility off them and puts it on us. The wrong way.

…

MR. RUSSERT: But as I hear it, Senator Warner and Senator Levin, the country Democrats are listening, and they want to be brought in to the table. And yet they’re not willing to put something on the table unless the president seems to make some admissions. Is that fair?

SEN. LEVIN: No. He’s not going to make admissions, he’s not capable of admitting mistakes. What we have put on the table is a proposal. Democratic leaders have put a proposal on the table. By the way, there are risks no matter what course we take, because obviously the Iraq policy has been such a terrible mistake; poorly handled, poorly conceived, a mistake going in, that’s overboard. Democrats and Republicans want us to try to maximize the chances of success. No matter what course we take, there’s going to be risks. But the current course is a failure, we’ve got to change it.

Here’s what we’ve proposed. We’ve proposed that the Iraqis be told that in four to six months, we’re going to begin a phased redeployment of American troops from Iraq.

MR. RUSSERT: The president’s rejected that.

SEN. LEVIN: I know the president’s rejected that. He’s rejected everything that reflects on his policy, or that suggests that his policy is wrong, or that we got to change course. He, he says over and over again, “We’re going to be in Iraq as long as the Iraqis want us.” That is an abdication, number one, of policy on our part. But worse, it’s the wrong message to the Iraqis. It tells them that it’s not their responsibility, it’s ours.

Tim, we’ve got to shift the responsibility to the Iraqis. The Democratic proposal is a modest one. It is not precipitous. It’s been characterized as cut and run. It is not. It simply says to the Iraqis, “Folks, you say, your prime minister says that the problem in Iraq is political.” Our military leaders say that there’s no military solution to Iraq. You put those two facts together—Maliki’s statement that the problem is political, with the, I think, fact that there’s no military solution. We have got to shift the onus to the Iraqis to solve their political problems. We cannot save them from themselves, Tim. And we should give them four to six months, and then we will begin a redeployment of American forces. Give them that much time to solve the problem, which they acknowledge is a political problem, not a military problem.

I have a feeling next year is going to be very, very interesting.