Senate Sets Debate on War Plans

A divided Senate is preparing to open a landmark debate over whether to authorize military action against Iraq, a move that could transform decades of U.S. defense policy, roil domestic politics just a month before congressional elections and open the way for an international conflict of potentially vast cost.

The debate, which could begin as early as today, will force the Senate to set aside virtually all other business for days, clearing the decks for the kind of deliberation about war and peace that has not consumed Capitol Hill since the divisive vote to authorize the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

The final wording of the resolution Congress will consider was still being negotiated Tuesday. President Bush has made it clear that he will settle for no less than broad latitude to act, regardless whether he secures the United Nations’ backing.

“I don’t want to get a resolution which ties my hands,” Bush said Tuesday, criticizing a bipartisan proposal by leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to focus the use of force more narrowly than he wants.

Bush is scheduled to meet with top Senate and House leaders today in hopes of reaching an agreement on the resolution’s final wording.

Senior aides said a deal may be struck between the White House, House Republican leaders and House Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), who has been far more hawkish about Iraq than other leading Democrats.

“We’re very close,” said a senior Gephardt aide.

That would make for easy House passage of the resolution but leave open the prospect of a more contentious debate in the Senate.

“We’re not there yet,” Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said of the push for compromise wording on the resolution.

Almost lost in the jockeying over the resolution’s fine points is that Congress is poised to, in effect, endorse a historic shift in U.S. strategy--moving from the Cold War reliance on deterrence and arms control to an approach that accepts preemptive attack as a legitimate way to defend against terrorists and regimes suspected of having weapons of mass destruction that could pose a threat to the United States.

“This is the beginning of a real argument about what America should do in the post-9/11 era,” said John Hulsman, a foreign policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.

“After 10 years of sleepwalking through victory in the Cold War, we’ve woken up to the fact that the end of history has not yet come,” he said.

The basic question facing Congress is not whether but how the United States will counter the perceived threat of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime--a more controversial question than when Bush struck Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

There is little doubt about the outcome of Congress’ vote; the main question is whether Bush wins by a large margin or an overwhelming one. Still, there is an edgy uncertainty in the halls of Congress as each lawmaker prepares to take a stand.

Although most are inclined to rally behind Bush, many lawmakers--like many of their most vocal constituents--are uneasy about launching a unilateral attack without broad international support or further diplomatic initiatives. Polls show that many voters have the same view.

“Many Americans also have questions about the urgency of the threat and the risks we face from Iraq,” said Sen. Charles Hagel (R-Neb.). “Not the threat itself, but the urgency of the threat.”

That puts Congress, usually a reactive institution, in the unusual position of taking the political risk of running ahead of public opinion. But with only a month to go before crucial midterm congressional elections, it is clear that many Democrats have concluded that the political risk of opposing Bush is even greater than the risks of backing a military venture about which they have many questions. Some lawmakers fear that the political backdrop of the debate will keep it from becoming a genuine give-and-take about lofty policy alternatives.

“I don’t believe you are going to see the Senate at its best,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.).

Other critics say that the political pressure on Democrats to mute their opposition and suppress their reservations will produce a debate far less probing than in 1991, when Congress approved a much less sweeping military authorization.

“They had a huge debate over a very limited resolution” in 1991, said Ivo Daalder, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonpartisan think tank. “We will have a puny debate over whether the U.S. can go preemptively to war.”

Although the Senate may begin debate today or Thursday, the final climactic votes will not come until next week--both because senators are expected to speak at length and because many lawmakers will be traveling to Hawaii for a Friday funeral for Rep. Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii).

Senate leaders had hoped to begin debate Tuesday but postponed it to give more time to the negotiation seeking compromises on the resolution’s wording. Many lawmakers and administration officials want the broadest possible bipartisan backing from Congress to strengthen Bush’s hand in organizing a balky international community around his cause.

The resolution Bush sent to Congress two weeks ago requested open-ended powers to use any means he determines appropriate to respond to Iraq and promote “peace and security in the region.” Members of both parties objected to that language as possibly opening the door to military action beyond Iraq. The administration last week agreed to drop that language to focus the measure more narrowly on Iraq, and agreed to periodically report to Congress.

But even those concessions were not enough for many Democrats--and even some Republicans.

Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) have circulated an alternative resolution that would increase congressional reporting requirements and the role of the U.N. in the faceoff with Iraq. It also would make clear that the principal rationale for an attack would be to dismantle Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction--not regime change, as the administration has advocated.

That alternative has won the support of Daschle as well as others cautious about war. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said she could support the Biden-Lugar proposal, with minor modifications.

“That is going to get us to where we need to go, which is to see Iraq disarmed,” said Feinstein.

But White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said that the Biden-Lugar proposal would be a retreat from an earlier 1998 congressional resolution that would allow the use of force against Iraq for supporting terrorism, suppressing its own people and threatening its neighbors. Moving to bring Lugar--a respected Republican--back into the fold, top administration officials met with him twice Tuesday in hopes of accommodating his concerns.

Biden has scheduled a meeting of the Foreign Relations Committee today to consider the alternative proposal--an effort to highlight it. But Biden acknowledged that Gephardt may be willing to embrace something much closer to Bush’s resolution, which is not limited to using force for disarmament.

The behind-the-scenes jockeying has created a mood of uncertainty as senators prepare to cast what many say could be the most important vote of their careers.

“It’s a very somber time,” said Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.). “This is totally new territory. It’s the first time in 213 years that we would have a policy of striking first.”

“It’s a vote that all the members will remember,” said former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who was a foreign policy leader during his years in Congress.

Lawmakers acknowledge that key questions--such as how many allies the United States would have if it decides to attack--will be unanswered before they have to cast a vote. “It’s going to be a difficult position,” said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine).

And many lawmakers say they are hearing mostly from constituents opposed to going to war. Said Sen. James M. Jeffords of Vermont, an independent: “My phone calls are 200 to 2 against doing anything.”