Ex-Joint Chiefs Back Gulf Delay : Mideast crisis: Adm. Crowe and Gen. Jones tell a congressional committee that sanctions against Iraq should be given more time. Bush may call special session.

Two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff criticized President Bush’s decision to deploy more troops to the Persian Gulf and told a congressional hearing Wednesday that the United States should not take military action against Iraq until economic sanctions have been given more time to work.

The testimony came amid indications that the Bush Administration may switch its political strategy and call Congress into special session before the end of the year to debate the President’s gulf policy. Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said that chances of such a session now are “better than 50-50.”

A preview of the contentiousness likely to occur between the Administration and Congress came during the hearings of the Senate Armed Services Committee when retired Air Force Gen. David C. Jones and retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. testified.

“I counsel patience,” said Crowe, who stepped down last year as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

“War is not neat. War is not tidy. War is a mess, and you have to be sure the stakes justify what you are doing.”

Members of the committee showed surprise as Crowe and Jones added their influential voices to the growing consensus among Democrats in Congress that the United States is sliding too quickly toward a major war in the Middle East without giving adequate thought to the possible consequences.

“No matter how emotionally satisfying it might be to launch a punitive campaign against (Iraqi President) Saddam Hussein, it is difficult to balance the presumed gains against the risks of unilateral action,” said Jones, who served from 1978 to 1982 as chairman of the Joint Chiefs under Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.

Jones also suggested that the decision to nearly double the number of troops deployed to the gulf was taken hastily and without sufficient thought. He said he fears it may create “irresistible pressures to initiate combat, irrespective of the progress of the U.N. sanctions.” The U.N.-imposed trade sanctions against Iraq have been in effect since Aug. 6

Crowe, who led the armed forces from 1985 until being replaced by Gen. Colin L. Powell last year, argued that the best course for the moment is to continue enforcing the sanctions, which he said are working better than anticipated.

Dismissing arguments to the contrary as “weird and wrong,” Crowe said the embargo is “biting heavily” and causing severe damage to Iraq’s civilian economy and its military establishment.

“The issue is not whether an embargo will work,” he said, “but whether we have the patience to let it take effect.”

Crowe also warned that going to war with Iraq before sanctions have run their course would only deepen anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, create new tensions and strain the international alliance against Iraq.

“I am persuaded that the U.S. initiating hostilities could well exacerbate many tensions . . . and further polarize the Arab world,” Crowe said. “The aftermath of such a contest will very likely multiply many-fold the anti-America resentment in the Middle East.”

Conservative Republicans on the committee, appearing uncomfortable with the testimony, sought to draw from Crowe an admission that he might be expecting too much from sanctions.

But the retired admiral replied that it would be “a sad commentary . . . if a two-bit tyrant” proved to be “more patient than the United States, the world’s most affluent and powerful nation.”

Democrats, clearly pleased to have their misgivings about Bush’s gulf policies reinforced by two top military men, made little attempt to conceal their satisfaction.

Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), the panel’s chairman, said the testimony is among “the most powerful” he has heard in 18 years on the Armed Services Committee.

“A number of members were surprised, even astonished, by the strength and scope of their convictions,” said Sen. William S. Cohen (R-Me.), the ranking Republican on the panel’s force-projection subcommittee.

The surprise testimony came the same day as another unexpected development: the possibility that the White House may reconsider its stance against a special session of Congress, which it feared might undermine the President’s strategy.

Dole made his prediction that such a session is more likely after meeting with Bush at the White House.

If Bush does call Congress back into session before its scheduled return in January, 1991, it will be because he has concluded that the only way to arrest the momentum that seems to be building against his policies is by taking a bold political gamble, Republican sources said.

The gamble, they added, is that the special session would force Democrats into a position where they would have to choose between supporting Bush’s gulf policies--including the option of using force--or risk being seen as unpatriotic, weak and vacillating at a time when thousands of American lives may soon be on the line in the Middle East.

Knowing this, many Democrats have also resisted calls for a special session, preferring instead to assert a role for Congress in the policy-making process through hearings by several House and Senate committees over the next two weeks.

Bush is scheduled to meet Friday with members of Congress. White House sources characterized the meeting as another round of consultations, although they conceded that congressional leaders may bring up the question of a special session.

On Monday, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney will present the Administration’s case to the Senate Armed Services Committee. But he and other Administration witnesses likely will find themselves in a defensive position, facing a committee whose consensus will have been reinforced by a parade of witnesses arguing that sanctions should be given more time before force is considered.

“The military testimony today gave Nunn and the other Democrats the political equivalent of close air support for their position on sanctions,” one committee source said.

One dissenting view, however, was expressed by former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger, who also appeared before the committee.

Questioning the ability of sanctions to compel Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, Kissinger said it may already be too late to avoid a war because of the destabilizing effect that a prolonged U.S. military presence could have on Saudi Arabia.

“The issue in Arabia is not American staying power but the host country’s domestic stability,” Kissinger said. He added that he has “serious doubts” about that country’s political ability to play host to “a substantial number of American forces over an indefinite period of time.”