MR. RUSSERT: What are you going to do?

SEN. LEVIN: Hopefully, we’re going to come up with a resolution which is going to modify, in effect, the previous resolution, which was very broad, told the president that he had authority to do basically whatever he wanted to in Iraq, and to come up with wording which would modify that broad resolution and broad authority so that we would be in a supporting role, rather than in a combat role, in Iraq. Things have changed in Iraq. We don’t believe that it’s going to be possible to remove all of our troops from Iraq because there’s going to be a limited purpose that they’re going to need to serve, including a training, continued training of the Iraqi army, support for logistics in the Iraqi army, a counterterrorism purpose or a mission because there’s about 5,000 al-Qaida in Iraq. So we want to—we want to transform, or we want to modify that earlier resolution to more limited purpose. That is our goal. We hope to pick up some Republicans; we don’t know if we will. But the final drafting is going on this weekend.

...

MR. RUSSERT: But if Congress passes this and says, OK, most U.S. troops out of Iraq by 2008, and the president says, “I’m sorry, I disagree,” and he just ignores you, what happens?

SEN. LEVIN: Well, then we have a constitutional battle on our hands because this is a binding resolution. Remember, our resolution, which you had up on the screen there, authorizing the president to go to war, something that he surely welcomed, he doesn’t have much standing, if we can get this passed, to say that our modified resolution, which has a more limited mission, is not effective. It would be very difficult, I think, for him to sustain that position given the fact that he has relied so heavily on our resolution authorizing him to go to war in the first place.

Now we know that Levin's going to get it from all sides for hamstringing the President in a time of war. Get the sense that he's not too worried about that particular charge anymore?

MR. RUSSERT: Aren’t you tying the hands of the commander in chief?

SEN. LEVIN: Well, we hope to put a cap on the number of troops. If I had my way, I would cap them. Of course, if I had my way, we never would have gone there to begin with. But, of course, we’re trying to tie the hands of the president and his policy. We’re trying to change the policy. And if someone wants to call that tying the hands instead of changing the policy, yeah, the president needs a check and a balance. This president hasn’t had one, hasn’t listened to others, including his top military commanders, and it’s about time he did.

Update [2007-2-25 17:43:42 by Nancy Scola]: What if we made it so that nobody votes on the Levin plan until they score better than, oh, 5 out of 8 on Sunni or Shiite? (h/t Dan Drezner)