Carl Levin

Democrat Carl Levin is the senior Senator representing the state of Michigan, and holds the record for the longest tenure of any Michigan Senator in history. Levin won his Senate seat in 1978, beating out then-Senate Minority Whip Robert P. Griffin. He will run for his sixth term in 2008.

Levin serves as the Chairman of the Senate's Armed Services Committee. His brother, Sander Levin, represents Michigan's 12th District in the House.

During the January 22, 2009 Senate confirmation hearing of Dennis Blair, nominee for director of national intelligence under the Obama Administration, Levin grilled Blair on whether waterboarding was torture. Although Blair's fellow cabinet nominee Eric Holder stated unequivocally that waterboarding was torture, Blair was more cautious. Blair stated that neither waterboarding nor torture would be conducted in the Obama administration, he refused to state outright that waterboarding was torture.Reuters: Obama spy choice won't call waterboarding torture (January 22, 2009)

Levin consistently opposed America's 2003 invasion of Iraq. He has expended much of his effort on the Armed Services Committee to disproving the notion that there are ties between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network, which formed much of the basis for the Bush Administration's justification for the war.

After making a much-publicized trip to Iraq in late 2007, accompanied by Virginia Senator John Warner, Levin argued that Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki was too "sectarian" to ably run the country and suggested the remainder of the Iraqi government remove him from office.