Democrats Put Line in the Sand on Bush Policy

Key Senate Democrats began drawing their own battle lines with President Bush on Tuesday, urging the Administration to give sanctions against Iraq more time to work and openly questioning whether war would serve America’s vital interests.

“The question is not whether military action is justified, as I believe it is. The question is whether military action is wise at this time and in our own national interest,” said Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) at the opening of congressional hearings by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Nunn chairs.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) complained on the first day of the committee’s weeklong hearing that the Bush Administration now seems “hellbent on setting an early deadline” for sanctions to work.

He warned that a war in the Persian Gulf could trigger “a conflagration in the Middle East with unknown results.”

Former Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger, the committee’s first witness, said the embargo already has cut Iraq’s civilian production capacity by 40% and will, if patiently applied, almost certainly compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait without the need to resort to force.

Schlesinger, who served as defense secretary under former presidents Richard M. Nixon and Gerald R. Ford, referred to what he called an “official” but still apparently classified estimate that sanctions would take about one year to really begin hurting Iraq.

Given that estimate, Schlesinger said, it is “illogical” for the Administration to now express “impatience with them because they will not have produced . . . results in six months’ time.”

Questioned about the origin of the one-year assessment, Schlesinger, also a former director of the CIA, said that it is based on calculations reached by the Administration but not yet made public. He declined to say more in open testimony but indicated that the senators probably would receive a fuller explanation in closed-door intelligence briefings that will occur while the hearings are in progress.

Nunn, one of the Senate’s most influential figures on military matters, said the embargo already has begun to “squeeze” the Iraqi economy, although the President appears to have “limited our options by creating a use-it-or-lose-it situation” with regard to the deployment of about 400,000 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.

Although Congress is not in session, the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs committees both plan hearings next week as part of the first in-depth congressional review of the Persian Gulf crisis since Bush announced three weeks ago that he was creating an offensive option in the area.

Until the deployment nearly doubled, the debate on Capitol Hill had been relatively restrained by what several Republican senators, sounding a cautionary note at Tuesday’s hearings, warned was the danger of sending the “wrong signals” to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

“The risk is that Hussein will view congressional debate as dissension, and dissension as a political defeat for President Bush,” Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.) said.

But Nunn and other influential Democrats, alarmed by what they perceive as the building momentum toward a bloody war that the American public may not support, said the hearings are essential to defining the nation’s objectives and strategy in the gulf so that a repetition of the divisive and painful debate that split the country during the Vietnam War can be avoided.

Although the Democratic position is still evolving, a consensus is coalescing around two key points: Sanctions should be given more time to work, and Congress must retain some control over the process by approving the use of force against Iraq in advance.

Judging from the senators’ opening comments, the hearings are likely to harden the consensus.

“Sanctions are not only working but working well, and they should be given additional time to work even more effectively,” said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). “To abandon them now . . . is to risk tens of thousands of American lives unnecessarily.”

Sen. Levin also criticized Bush’s refusal to promise Congress that he will seek its consent before deciding to use force, saying that he finds it “incredible that the President feels the need to obtain U.N. approval for a U.S. offensive but won’t commit himself to seeking congressional approval.”

But the toughest criticism at Tuesday’s hearing came from Sen. Robert Kerrey (D-Neb.), a war hero who lost a leg and won the Medal of Honor in Vietnam.

“The Administration’s policy . . . is pushing us into a war we could avoid, reopening social divisions we have only recently healed and undermining public support for a sound and sustained foreign and military policy,” Kerrey said.

“The Administration has tried to sell the American public a crusade where we needed a mission, hyperbole where we needed a rationale. . . . The President has quite suddenly staked our nation’s honor to an escalation he has not thought through,” he added.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are scheduled to testify before the committee next week. But in the meantime, a parade of former government officials and Middle East experts are expected to give the Democrats more ammunition for their argument that the Administration is moving too quickly in the direction of war.

Schlesinger warned that the Middle East “would never be the same” after an all-out war with Iraq.

He said that the goal should not be the complete destruction of Iraq’s military capability, because that would leave the region open to domination by Iran and Syria which, until the present crisis erupted, were regarded as worse “rogues” than Iraq.