Levin Proposes Starting to Pull Troops from Iraq in Three Months

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• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  And now the start of a series of conversations about what Iraq might look like when we leave. This week, both Democrats and Republicans in the Senate will be offering proposals calling for U.S. forces to come home. Every proposal, no matter when or how it works, will have a bearing on the Iraq of the future.

  Tonight, we begin our series with Democrat Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and author of a proposal to redeploy troops within 120 days. I spoke with Senator Levin a short while ago.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Senator Levin, thank you for joining us. First, to the events of today. Your amendment, your proposal, remind us how it would work.

  SEN. CARL LEVIN (D), Michigan: Well, what we do, Senator Jack Reed and I, is to say that American troops will begin to be reduced within the next 120 days or more technically 120 days after enactment of our amendment. And then the transition to the new, limited missions will be completed by April of next year. And those new limited missions would be force protection and also a limited or a very pointed counterterrorism mission against al-Qaida.

  But ours is the only amendment that we know of so far that is binding, that would tell the Iraqis that we are going to begin to take a step to force them to take responsibility for their own nation. It's long overdue; the Iraqis have been fiddling while their Baghdad capital has been burning. And there is no solution in Iraq other than a political solution.

  The only hope of ending the violence and avoiding an all-out civil war is if the political leaders of Iraq come together and work out those differences over the political issues that divide them, including resource sharing, including elections in the provinces, including the de-Baathification laws and so forth.

• JUDY WOODRUFF:

  Senator, your leader, your Democratic leader in the Senate announced today a maneuver, in essence, to try to get the Republicans, to force the Republicans to vote on this. What's that all about?

• SEN. CARL LEVIN:

  Well, in the Senate, as you know, the majority doesn't rule if the minority filibusters. And the Republicans apparently are going to filibuster our amendment trying to force us to get the 60 votes which would be necessary in order to end debate and get to what we call an up-or-down vote where the majority can decide what to do here.

  But given the threat of filibuster, the leader, Democratic leader, is filing cloture on the Levin-Reed amendment so that we will vote on Wednesday as to whether or not we want to have a vote. And I expect that the Republicans will filibuster that effort and try to force us to get 60 votes.