They've been Dawdling

Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan on FNS this week:

LEVIN: Well, no, I'm going to respond first to Senator Graham.

You know, he talks about pouring the pressure on. The pressure which is being poured on is military pressure. There is no military solution there. There is only a political solution.

We've got to pour the pressure on the Iraqi political leaders to reach a political settlement. They made commitments that they would reach political settlements on oil revenues, on power sharing and on other things by last December.

The president, over and over and over again — our president — has said, "We are going to hold them to their political commitments." Is the president serious about holding them to their political commitments? Did he mean what he said?

They've been dawdling over there in Iraq politically for four years. This insurgency, which has now taken place in spades in Baghdad, is something which is fairly recent.

They had plenty of time to reach a political settlement. They committed to do it. The Iraq study group said they must do it. If they don't, there should be consequences.

All we've gotten from this administration is hollow rhetoric about the Iraqi leaders need to meet their commitments. But there's no teeth behind the hollow rhetoric of this administration.

I normally like Chris Wallace's interviews but this week was left dumbfounded when he couldn't be bothered to ask Senator Levin the obvious follow-up question to this diminution of Iraqi political efforts.

Namely, why and how then is it that things routinely bottleneck in the US Senate...for years.