WASHINGTON -- Michigan U.S. Sen. Carl Levin took the gavel this morning as chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, telling top Pentagon officials they must rethink their strategy for taming Baghdad's violence.
"Deepening our involvement in Iraq would be a mistake," Levin, D-Detroit, said at the start of his first hearing as new chairman. "Deeping our involvement in Iraq on the assumption that the Iraqis will meet future benchmarks and commitments, given their track record, would be a compounding of that mistake."
Levin repeated his assertion that the only way to tame Iraq's sectarian violence is to place intense pressure on the country's new democratic government to reach agreements to end the strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims that has resulted in thousands of civilian deaths.
But the hearing also quickly demonstrated some of the difficulties Levin will have in steering the committee, which overseas all military policies.
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