Carl Levin

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that further reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I understand that the Senator from Arizona is now going to be making some remarks. I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from Arizona finishes his remarks, Senator Kennedy be recognized.

Mr. LEVIN. Well, I think on our side there will be many speeches supporting this amendment, perhaps some opposing the amendment.

Mr. LEVIN. I hope so. And I hope people will want to speak, will come and speak on the amendment, because hopefully we can get to enough votes tomorrow so that we can actually have a vote on Levin-Reed, that we can get to 60 votes, to achieve cloture. We would then be able to have a vote on the pending amendment. Other than that, we would be thwarted. There would be a procedural roadblock in reaching a vote on Levin-Reed. So that is the goal, if everyone is given a chance to speak on Levin- Reed, whatever side they are on, so that we can then, hopefully, end the debate on Levin-Reed and actually get to a vote on it.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, there is indeed, as I understand it, a consent which has been already reached that there be a vote on the Cornyn amendment at 2:45. There was an offer yesterday, as a matter of fact, to, I believe, simply accept that amendment, but someone wanted to have a rollcall vote on it. That is their right.

Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator would yield, it is my fervent hope that we have a bill this year. It is not only my intent to try to work out amendments, it has been our intent for many days to work out those amendments. I understand there is some kind of a procedure that some Members on your side have insisted upon which has slowed down that process significantly. So our staffs and I, and I know the Senator from Arizona, the ranking member on the committee, are more than ready to work out these amendments, as many as possible. Usually, we can work out as many as 100 on an authorization bill. I think there are 190 amendments filed. We are up to the task. Our staffs are up to the task. We have to be allowed to proceed. I understand there is some kind of roadblock that perhaps the Senator from Arizona could identify and help to remove.

Mr. LEVIN. I believe it is set for 1 hour after the Senate convenes.

Mr. LEVIN. There is no time for that yet, for the Senate to come in tomorrow. We have to await that.

Mr. LEVIN

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, how much time remains?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. President, I think everybody in this body would like to leave Iraq better than we found it. That is not the current situation. The current situation is chaos and violence in Iraq. It is an Iraq that is torn apart by sectarian violence. When you have group slaughtering group in a civil war, a sectarian type of war, it requires that the Iraqi political leaders take action to end the violence. The only way to end the violence is if the Iraqi political leaders will reach a political settlement. I think almost everybody agrees with that. I think our uniformed military agrees with that, our civilian leaders agree, and almost everybody agrees that there is no military solution in Iraq, and that the only solution, the only way to end this violence is if the Iraqi political leaders accept the responsibility to work out political agreements on a number of disagreements they have identified for themselves. We talk a lot about benchmarks, and the President said the other day that on eight benchmarks we are making progress, and on eight we are not--to make it sound like we have a glass that is half full. But that is not what the facts sustain or support. The facts are that we have a glass called Iraq which has a hole in the bottom. Whatever we pour into Iraq goes right through that hole. It is going to continue to do that until one thing happens, and that is that the Iraqi political leaders decide they are going to work out a political settlement. There is a consensus about that, I believe, among almost all of us. The Iraqi Prime Minister made the following statement, and every one of us, when we vote on Levin-Reed, ought to keep this one statement in mind, I believe, first and foremost. This is what Prime Minister Maliki said: The crisis is political, and the ones who can stop the cycle of bloodletting of innocents are the politicians. Well, it is long overdue that the politicians in Iraq step up to their responsibility. The amendment before us, it seems to me, states something which is clear. I believe it is obvious that it is in everyone's interest that Iraq not be a failed state. I agree with my friend from Texas. That should be a goal of everybody. The problem is that Iraq is the No. 2 most unstable state in the world right now. That is the status quo. That is what we have to end. The only way to end it is with a political settlement by the Iraqis. There was an article a few days ago in Foreign Policy magazine called ``The States That Fail Us.'' It is about failed states. It has a list of about 60 states, and they give all of the indicators of instability. Iraq is No. 2 on the list, right after Sudan. That is the status quo. That is what we are trying to end--the failure of a policy in Iraq which has led the Iraqi leaders to believe that there is an open-ended commitment on the part of the United States to give them protection in that green zone to the extent that it exists. It is that open-ended commitment of the United States that must end--if we are going to prod the Iraqi leaders to finally step up, look into the abyss and make a decision, do they want a civil war or do they want a nation? Mr. President, we cannot save them from themselves. To say that we don't want a failed state in Iraq is to say we don't want the status quo to continue, that the course must change in Iraq. So I will vote for the Cornyn amendment because I think it states, in general terms at least, what I hope Members of the Senate would all agree on--that a failed state in Iraq is not in the interest of this Nation.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I understand our staffs have reached a point where we were able to clear something like 26 amendments on this bill but that there is one last hurdle on the Republican side. I am wondering whether my good friend from Arizona feels there may be a possibility that we can jump over that hurdle in the next couple hours.

Mr. LEVIN. I thank my friend. I understand the Senator from Nebraska wants the floor, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LEVIN. Reserving the right to object, I wonder if the Senator will repeat that.

Mr. LEVIN. Objection.

Mr. LEVIN. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request?

Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that after the Senator from Maryland finishes her remarks, then on the Republican side, I understand Senator Warner will be the next speaker, and then that Senator Schumer be recognized on our side.

Mr. LEVIN. I thank my friend from Maryland.

Mr. LEVIN. If I can respond to my good friend's question.

Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator will yield for an answer.

Mr. LEVIN. I think the Senate spoke also prior to adopting your amendment. We voted 51 to 48, adopted an amendment which said we will begin to reduce our forces and to transition to the new mission, and that we would begin that transition within 120 days. That was vetoed by the President.

Mr. LEVIN. The Senate spoke even before it adopted the amendment of the Senator from Virginia. So we have spoken in many ways over the years. But now it is our belief, those of us who support this amendment, that the earlier we put pressure on the Iraqi leaders to reach a political solution, which everybody agrees is the only hope, the earlier we put that pressure on them, the better.

Mr. LEVIN. I think the Senator is well aware this President is not compelled to veto anything. As a matter of fact, the report the Senator refers to, which is due in September, will be coming in before this bill gets to the President. At least there is some hope the President will see what the Republican leader in the Senate saw a month ago. It was the Senator from Kentucky who a couple of months ago said: The handwriting is on the wall. There is going to be a change of course in September. Now, why wait? We are losing men and women, our best and our brightest, our bravest, every day in Iraq. Those who return wounded will have a lifetime of recovery in many cases. We have record numbers of problems that have come up--post-traumatic stress disorder, we have traumatic brain injuries which are plaguing our troops who survive. Thank God we have great medical care on the battlefield. Why wait until September? The Republican leader said the handwriting is on the wall. There is going to be a change of course in September. There should be a change of course, not just in September, it should have changed a long time ago. But there is no way to change this course unless the leaders of Iraq do what only they can do, what their own Prime Minister said had to happen before the bloodletting of innocents ends in Iraq. They and they alone have it in their hands to work out the political settlement, which, according to their own agreement, was supposed to have been reached months ago.

Mr. LEVIN. I thank my friend, and I don't view this at all as personal. A matter of fact, we had this interim report on July 15. What did it come in and say? It came in and said, on the political side, nothing has happened in Iraq; and on the political side, we see no advances. But the political side is where the advances have to take place. As a matter of fact, the President said, when he came up with this surge policy, that the purpose of the surge was to give the political leaders an opportunity to reach a political settlement. Well, they have had that opportunity, they haven't done it, and the surge has not accomplished anything in the area of a political settlement.

Mr. LEVIN. If the Senator will yield, I think we all share that view, but the amendment, if it is anything, it is not precipitous. This is coming after a great deal of debate. We have had a vote on this. The Senate voted to do something very similar to this, and it was vetoed. We have a 120-day period to begin to reduce forces. That is not precipitous. That gives the Iraqis notice, now 4 months more notice after enactment, which can't come for many months, that they have to begin to get their political act together.