MTP Transcript for Feb. 25, 2007

MR. TIM RUSSERT: Our issues this Sunday: On October 11^th, 2002, a majority of Democratic senators voted to give President Bush the authorization to go to war in Iraq. This week many of those same Democrats will seek to repeal that authorization and set a goal for the withdrawl of American combat troops. What now? With us, one of the architects of the new plan, an exclusive interview with Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Armed Services Committee.

Then, a former Clinton fund-raiser, now an Obama fund-raiser, criticizes Bill and Hillary Clinton, triggering a testy exchange between the campaigns.

And Vice President Cheney chastises Senator John McCain for his words about Donald Rumsfeld.

All this political sniping, 618 days before the election. Our roundtable, with Dan Balz of The Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of The New York Times, presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Byron York of the National Review.

But first, this week Democratic senators will seek to repeal the authority many of them gave to the president four years ago to go to war in Iraq. With us, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.

Welcome.

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI): Thank you, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: What are you going to do?

SEN. LEVIN: Hopefully, we’re going to come up with a resolution which is going to modify, in effect, the previous resolution, which was very broad, told the president that he had authority to do basically whatever he wanted to in Iraq, and to come up with wording which would modify that broad resolution and broad authority so that we would be in a supporting role, rather than a in combat role, in Iraq. Things have changed in Iraq. We don’t believe that it’s going to be possible to remove all of our troops from Iraq because there’s going to be a limited purpose that they’re going to need to serve, including a training, continued training of the Iraqi army, support for logistics in the Iraqi army, a counterterrorism purpose or a mission because there’s about 5,000 al-Qaida in Iraq. So we want to—we want to transform, or we want to modify that earlier resolution to more limited purpose. That is our goal. We hope to pick up some Republicans; we don’t know if we will. But the final drafting is going on this weekend.

MR. RUSSERT: Will you set a goal for withdrawing combat troops?

SEN. LEVIN: We would. We would follow basically the pattern which was set or proposed by the Iraq Study Group, which was to set a goal for the removal of combat troops, as you put it correctly, by March of next year.

MR. RUSSERT: So how many troops would that be, of March of next year, would be taken out?

SEN. LEVIN: We don’t have a specific number, nor did the study group. But it would be most, that there would be a limited number of troops that would be left.

MR. RUSSERT: So out of 150,000, we would take out how many?

SEN. LEVIN: I would say most.

MR. RUSSERT: What would be left behind?

SEN. LEVIN: It would be a limited number, which would...

MR. RUSSERT: Ten thousand, 20,000?

SEN. LEVIN: I don’t want to put a specific number on it because that really should be left to the commanders who decide how many would be needed to carry out those limited functions. But we’ve got to—the issue we’re facing, the key issue is do we want American troops in the middle of a civil war. That’s the fundamental issue which we want to debate. We’ve been wanting to debate that for many, many weeks, but, of course, we were filibustered before. But that’s the, the key issue here. The Republicans have filibustered our effort to vote on this question: Do we want to surge troops into Iraq, do we want to get in deeper militarily, do we want to get in the middle of a civil war or not? And almost all the Democrats, plus a few Republicans, do not want to get in the middle of that civil war.

MR. RUSSERT: But if Congress passes this and says, OK, most U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008, and the president says, “I’m sorry, I disagree,” and he just ignores you, what happens?

SEN. LEVIN: Well, then we have a constitutional battle on our hands because this is a binding resolution. Remember, our resolution, which you had up on the screen there, authorizing the president to go to war, something that he surely welcomed, he doesn’t have much standing, if we can get this passed, to say that our modified resolution, which has a more limited mission, is not effective. It would be very difficult, I think, for him to sustain that position given the fact that he has relied so heavily on our resolution authorizing him to go to war in the first place.

MR. RUSSERT: Now, the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, had a news conference on Friday, talking to reporters. This is what he said. Let’s listen.

(Audiotape)

SEN. MITCH McCONNELL: What seems to be coming next is the second step of their slow-bleed strategy, which I gather could best be described as trying to unring a bell. Now, that’s what the Democrats would be attempting to do in altering the original use of force authorization that, of course, a great many of them voted for. ... The truth of the matter is there’s really only, you know, one way to end the war, if that’s what our Democratic friends want to do. That is to cut off the funding for the war.

(End of audiotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Why don’t Democrats do what Senator McConnell says that they could do, cut off funding for the war?

SEN. LEVIN: There’s another way to achieve our goal. Number one, we can cap the number of troops. We can change the mission. These would both be binding resolutions without cutting funding for our troops. Most of us do not want to cut funding for our troops for two reasons. One is it’s wrong. Our troops deserve our support as long as they’re there, and we’re not going to repeat the mistake of Vietnam where we took out on the troops our differences over policies with the administration. Our differences are with the commander in chief and his policies, and we’re going to fund the troops as long as they’re there. Secondly, because that resolution would lose, the president would then use the defeat of a cut-the-funding resolution as a way of supporting his policy. So we would be playing right into the hands of the president and his policy makers by having a losing vote on funding. So it’s the wrong thing to do, and it also would strengthen the president’s hand when we don’t want to do that. We want to change the president’s course. He is on a course that is leading to defeat. The president’s course is getting us in deeper and deeper militarily. It is not working. We want to change that course. We don’t, don’t want to do anything which would strengthen that course.

MR. RUSSERT: What about the notion that Democrats are afraid politically to cut off funding?

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