Word: levins
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...outset of the hearing, Sen. Carl Levin, who will take over the committee chairmanship in January, hit Gates with a loaded question right off the bat: "Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq...
...Levin's follow-up question was just as freighted. The senator pulled out a quote from Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, from a Nov. 23 press conference, and read it to Gates: "The crisis is political, and it is the politicians who must try to prevent more violence and bloodletting. The terrorist acts are a reflection of the lack of political accord." Levin asked Gates if he agreed with Maliki's statement...
...Gates's answer was important. In Levin's view, Maliki's statement reinforced the Democrats' own arguments to begin a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces. "There's no military solution here now," Levin explained to TIME last week. "There's only a political solution now. That's why we should not put so much emphasis on a military solution and we should force the politicians to reach some kind of compromise on Iraq...
...response to another question from Levin, Gates indicated that he would be open to modest troop withdrawals to force the Iraqi political leadership to take on more responsibility for security. "All options are on the table," Gates said. He also was not shy about suggesting that Rumsfeld had made misjudgments in the Iraq war. Asked by Republican John McCain, a likely 2008 presidential candidate, if the Pentagon had too few troops in Iraq at the outset - something the senator has long argued - Gates agreed. "There clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion," the former CIA director said...
...Senate Democrats appear willing to let bygones be bygones. One of the senators who voted against Gates in 1991 was Carl Levin, who takes over as Armed Services Committee chairman next year. "Fifteen years have passed since that vote," Levin says. "I'm going to want to consider what his record has been since then - his thinking and writing since then. And I'm going to give it a fair and fresh look...