Sen. Levin turns up heat on Iraq; Bush stands ground

Gordon Trowbridge / Detroit News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Senator Carl Levin said he is adding new teeth to his longstanding proposal for troop withdrawal from Iraq, setting a firm date for a sharply limited U.S. military mission as Congress and President Bush lined up for another showdown over the war.

The proposal by Levin, D-Mich., was just one of several Democratic attempts to change Iraq policy coming to the Senate on Tuesday. The White House nonetheless signaled its continued opposition to congressional involvement. President Bush dispatched his top two Iraq advisers to lobby senators against policy changes, and Bush said he would continue to fight any attempt to set troop levels "by political figures in Washington, D.C."

On Thursday, the Bush administration is to release a progress report on Iraq. The report, required by Congress, is expected to show no headway by Iraqi politicians on meeting the benchmarks on political reconciliation that Democrats and Republicans say are crucial.

Levin -- chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee -- and Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., will again introduce legislation to begin pulling troops from Iraq within 120 days. But this time, it'll come as an amendment to the 2008 defense policy bill now on the Senate floor.

The measure they outlined Tuesday is similar to one they first pitched more than a year ago, and to one attached in April to an Iraq spending bill that Bush vetoed. The measure would begin a pullout within four months and limit U.S. troops to a set of jobs: Protecting U.S. diplomats and other officials; training and supplying Iraqi security forces; and anti-terrorism missions.

This time, Levin and Reed want to require completion of that transition by April. Previous versions of their plan would have left timing up to the administration. The definitive timeline may make it more difficult to pick up votes from Republicans, many of whom are beginning to waver in their support for the war.

"Whether that loses votes or picks up votes, we just simply don't know," Levin said. "It's important, if we're going to end this open-ended commitment, that we set an end date."

It's unclear when the Senate will vote on the measure, but it will likely come after Thursday, when the administration will release its first assessment of how the surge of American troops into Baghdad and Anbar province has fared.

Levin said that if the bare majority who voted for similar language this spring grows this time around, it will increase pressure on Iraqi leaders to resolve their political differences, and on Bush to change his unpopular Iraq policy. Still, it's unlikely the measure will receive the 60 votes it will probably need to pass, let alone the two-thirds majority needed to overcome a Bush veto.

Reed, a former Army Ranger and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he is encouraged that some Republicans have seemed more willing in recent days to support binding legislation, rather than the advisory legislation, without much practical effect, that has passed so far.

But as the Senate renewed the Iraq debate on Tuesday, it became clear that obstacles remain to passing significant legislation. Republicans used a procedural hurdle to block, for a day at least, consideration of a measure proposed by Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., that would guarantee minimum time back home for military units between deployments. That language was widely seen as more palatable to Republicans than the timetable included in Levin's proposal.

Still, Democrats have seen statements in the last two weeks by Republicans including Sens. Richard Lugar and Pete Domenici as signaling plummeting GOP support for the White House position.

On Tuesday, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, inched closer to Levin's proposal, telling CNN, "A troop redeployment and a change of mission for the remaining troops by a specific period of time certainly at this point is crucial."

It's unlikely that Thursday's progress report will reassure Republicans nervous about the course of the war and the 2008 election. Citing unnamed White House sources, the Associated Press reported that the report would conclude that the Iraqi government has met none of the economic and political benchmarks that the troop surge was supposed to foster. That's no surprise; the Iraqi parliament has deadlocked for months on issues such as a division of oil revenues and amendments to the constitution.

But Bush signaled that he is unlikely to yield to calls for a change in course before September, when top commander Gen. David Petraeus is supposed to return to Washington for a second, more formal report on the war's progress.

"I believe Congress ought to wait for Gen. Petraeus to come back and give his assessment of the strategy he's putting into place before making any decisions," Bush said in Cleveland.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, who was recently confirmed as the White House's policy coordinator for Iraq and Afghanistan, visited Republicans on Capitol Hill in an attempt to shore up support. Sen. Lindsay Graham., R-S.C., told the Associated Press that Hadley had pledged to fight Levin's proposal.

You can reach Gordon Trowbridge at (202) 662-8738 or gtrowbridge@detnews.com.