From Redstate here and here.  Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) thinks we should take military action against Iran and Syria.  Here’s a transcript of an exchange between Levin and John McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, that occurred at an Armed Services Committee hearing yesterday:

Levin: Now, in terms of the weapons coming in from Syria, those weapons that you’ve described as coming in from Syria and perhaps other Sunni neighbors are killing our troops. Do we have a plan to address the Syrian weapon source—of killings of our troops?

McConnell: Sir, I know the military is working that border area to close it down from not only weapons but also jihadists coming in….

Levin: It’s more than just–we’re trying to close down the Iranian border area too. The problem is that these weapons are coming from a state which is–doesn’t recognize Israel either, just like Iran doesn’t. We’ve got to try to stop weapons coming into Iraq from any source that are killing our troops. I agree with the comments about trying to stop them coming in from Iran, I think we have to try stop them that are going to the Sunni insurgents as well as to the Shia. I was just wondering, does the military have a plan to, if necessary, to go into Syria to go to the source of any weapons coming from Syria? That are going to Sunni insurgents? That are killing our troops?

Levin: I think we ought to take action on all fronts including Syria and any other source of weapons coming in, obviously Iran is the focus—but it shouldn’t be the sole focus.  (Emphasis added.)

Erick at Redstate says:

Get ready for Carl Levin to get shot by Cindy Sheehan or some other angry lefty.  I’m not sure what happened to him, but he’s making sense right now.  On Sunday’s Meet The (De)Press(ed), he finally admitted that Al-Qaeda is in Iraq and American troops needed to stay there for ‘a counter-terrorism purpose.’
[…]
Today, he got bolder and called for escalation of the offensives against both Iran and Syria.  Bravo.

Gee.  It seems as if the good Senator got caught up in the practical realities of the situation in the Middle East and “forgot himelf,” as it were.  Or did he perhaps let his experience as a member of the Armed Services Committee—and his responsibility as the chairman of the same committee—outweigh his political “obligations” to the Democratic Party?

Nah.  He’ll come to his right left mind and offer up some sort of clarification before too long.  (Maybe after Harry Reid and Joe Biden take him off into a corner somewhere and remind him which party he belongs to….)  What Erick failed to mention about Levin’s Sunday “Meet the Press” appearance was his continued insistence that “his party aims to limit the role of the nearly 140,000 American troops in Iraq and withdraw most of them from the war-torn country within a year.”  (Reuters.)

Or maybe it was simply a matter of Levin trying to bait McConnell into saying something about the administration’s intentions that isn’t public knowledge…?

Here’s the YouTube video of the exchange mentioned above:

Yeah.  The Levin-leopard’s too old to change his spots now.

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