Bush Indicts Saddam

Bush Indicts Saddam
The Weekly Standard
by Fred Barnes, for the Editors
09/23/2002, Volume 008, Issue 02

HERE'S THE MEASURE of President Bush's success in assembling support for regime change in Iraq. Following his speech to the United Nations last week, National Public Radio put together a focus group of college students at Penn State-Harrisburg. The unanimous verdict: Bush had indeed made the case for military action to remove Saddam Hussein. Yep, that's NPR, the voice of hyper-liberalism and the counterculture. And those were supposedly antiestablishment college kids. One student said moving against Saddam was long overdue. Another thought the case against Iraq is even stronger than Bush said. Still another, an immigrant from Uganda, said Congress "should support the president. He's our commander in chief."

Bush has turned the corner in his pursuit of regime change in Iraq. The days of muddling along, of off-and-on negotiations over the return of arms inspectors, of deliberations on lifting sanctions--those days are over. The options now are crystal clear, because Bush has made them so. Either the U.N. Security Council will enforce rigorous and sweeping restrictions on Iraq likely to lead to Saddam's collapse, or the United States, with enough allies to constitute a serious coalition and with the approval of Congress, will take military action to remove Saddam, destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and install a democratic government.

Bush's U.N. address was the toughest speech ever delivered to the international body by an American president, and it offered few sweeteners. The only applause came when the president said the United States will return to UNESCO. Instead, Bush presented the most compelling argument so far in his administration's campaign to gain support for regime change in Iraq. The week before Labor Day, Vice President Cheney delivered the first indictment, followed by Bush last week, and this week Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA director George Tenet, and perhaps Secretary of State Colin Powell will testify on Capitol Hill. The administration has recruited House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt, who agreed to set up a bipartisan working group on Iraq. And last week, a group of Democratic congressmen spent hours at the White House getting briefed by administration officials. But this is no time for Bush to relax--and there's no indication he intends to.

At the U.N., the administration plans to take a smart gamble. It will push a resolution--another country, probably Britain, will formally propose it--to impose highly intrusive, coercive arms inspections on Iraq, backed by military force, along with other measures to take oil-for-food funds out of Saddam's hands, bar him from trafficking with terrorists, and force him to stop repressing his own people. Bush, in fact, outlined what he expects of Iraq in his U.N. speech. The best guess is Saddam will say no. He simply "has an unwillingness to accept weapons inspectors," a U.S. official says. Otherwise, he would have grandly announced the day before the speech that inspectors could come to Iraq that day, September 11. That "would have gutted the president's speech," the official adds. But what if Saddam accepts the harsh, new terms? Then, he'll quickly lose control of his own government and fall from power, though perhaps not as quickly as he will if the United States invades.

What the U.N. does is less important than what Congress does. A president can act without U.N. assent, as President Clinton did in Kosovo in 1999. But if Congress stands in the way, the president may pay a price (Congress may, as well). Approval of a war resolution authorizing military action would give Bush unequivocal political support for ousting Saddam to match the popular support that already exists. Many Democrats are opposed to this. Opponents of intervention in Iraq would rather put off their no vote until after the November 5 midterm elections. And Democratic strategists fear the debate over a war resolution would prolong the time in which Iraq, and not the Democratic agenda of domestic issues, would command national attention. Bush can easily overcome Democratic foot-dragging by asking publicly for a vote on a resolution. That would move the political dynamic even further in his favor than it is now. As things stand, Bush plans to ask for a war resolution, preferably a bipartisan one, the last week of September. By that time, the House may be on the verge of passing one. But the House isn't the problem. Tom Daschle's Senate is. And even Daschle conceded, after the U.N. speech, that a Senate vote before Congress adjourns in October is "likely." A public request by Bush would make that certain.

What about Democratic delaying tactics, questions, and complaints? Bush sneered at the notion, promoted by Daschle and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, of delaying a vote until the U.N. acts. "I can't imagine an elected member of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives saying, 'I think I'm going to wait for the United Nations to act before I decide,'" Bush said. We can't either. Daschle has noted that a congressional resolution authorizing Desert Storm in 1991--which he opposed--came after the U.N. had passed a resolution. But that was merely a coincidence. It was hardly precedent-setting.

House Democratic whip Nancy Pelosi says she requires evidence of an "imminent threat" from Iraq to back an attack. She misses the point. Saddam has weapons of mass destruction and is in contact with terrorists, therefore the threat is constant. Daschle seeks to know what a post-Saddam Iraq would look like. That's unknowable, except that democracy would have a chance to take root, lives would be saved, and weapons of mass destruction in even the most remote underground facilities would be found and destroyed. And what about the harm an invasion of Iraq would do to the war on terrorism? Answer: The invasion would be part of the war on terrorism. And the U.S. military is large enough and powerful enough to track down al Qaeda remnants in Afghanistan and around the world and still fight a war--probably a short war--in Iraq.

A final point in praise of Bush. All that's happening as the world moves toward his position on Iraq was caused by the president--the U.N. deliberations, the House and Senate hearings, the proposals like French president Jacques Chirac's that would put enormous pressure on Saddam, the support from a growing number of Democrats, notably Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, indeed the fact that Iraq dominates the world agenda. By acting boldly, by insisting Saddam must go, by declaring the United States is ready to remove him unilaterally, the president has all but guaranteed that Saddam's days are numbered. As impressive as Bush was in the weeks after September 11, his performance in the past two weeks has been his finest hour.

--Fred Barnes, for the Editors