Michigan Senator Carl Levin stated Monday in an editorial in the Washington Post that the United States should begin to "consider a timetable for withdrawal of US forces" from Iraq if "the Iraqis fail to reach a political solution by the end of the year." In the editorial Senator Levin argues that rather than making claims that the United States will stay in Iraq "as long as needed," the United States must make it clear that the US military will stay only if the Iraqi government makes "progress" which Levin describes as a "political solution" to the factionalism that is enabling the insurgency. Levin's editorial does not call for ending the occupation, instead he goes to great lengths to explain that he does not mean "setting a date" for withdrawal but that the threat of withdrawal can be used as a way of forcing a favorable political solution to the situation in Iraq.

Levin, as ranking Democratic Party member on the Senate's Armed Services Committee, is the highest-ranking Democrat to mention the withdrawal of US troops in Iraq.