We Need Answers, Mr. Bush

President Bush continues to crank up the pressure against Saddam Hussein and America’s equivocal allies. On Thursday he asked for authority to use every means he deemed appropriate, “including force,” against Iraq. He was speaking to Congress, but he knew full well that the world, including the United Nations Security Council, was listening.

Bush is pressing that body to draft a new, hard-edged resolution against Iraq, while making it clear that he’ll go it alone if the U.N. doesn’t come through. The Constitution of course says nothing about steamrolling past the U.N., but it couldn’t be more clear in insisting that Congress act as a check on the commander in chief. Some Congress members are fulfilling that responsibility. Unfortunately, with elections looming and Americans still enraged by last year’s terrorism, many timid lawmakers apparently think bravado is a safe recipe for getting votes.

Bravery, on the other hand, demands that elected leaders interrupt their president’s tough rhetoric with a barrage of tough questions before risking young Americans’ lives and launching the nation on the radically new course of preemptive first strikes.

Here are a few questions that demand full and complete answers from the president:

* If, as some hawks claim, Hussein’s army is a feeble pushover, much weaker than the forces he fielded during the Gulf War, what immediate danger does he pose?

* Weapons of mass destruction? Where’s the concrete evidence that the arsenal we’ve always known he had has significantly changed? And be specific, please. We know, for instance, that Iraq has attempted to import thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes of a sort used for nuclear weapons construction. But the independent Institute for Science and International Security is skeptical; it says those pipes aren’t anything like conclusive evidence that Iraq is close to possessing nuclear weapons. Do you know otherwise? What else have you got?

* Speaking of evidence, tell us again why the U.S. shouldn’t give the U.N. a final chance to send in inspectors with full access, backed by stiff resolutions and the threat of force. Certainly, Hussein has an infuriating tendency to play responsible nations for fools. Still, wouldn’t it make more sense to follow the model of the first Bush administration, which depended on an international coalition and U.N. resolutions to pave the way for a successful war?

* In fact, why should the United States abandon the policy of containment crafted by your father? Hussein hasn’t launched a Scud missile since then--what makes you think he would do so now?

* Realistically, what would this war cost and how would the United States pay for it? How about the aftermath? What national and international programs would the nation sacrifice to compensate?

* Finally, perhaps most important, what do you envision a postwar Iraq looking like? Would we seek to keep Iraq a single state? Would it be a federation? What about a homeland for the Kurds? Who would serve as the interim leader of Iraq? Does anyone really expect a democracy to blossom in a nation with no such tradition? If not, what form of government does the U.S. hope would emerge?

Congress cannot approve Bush’s resolution to wage war against Iraq unless it trusts completely that he has solid reasons for attacking, a well-conceived strategy for getting the job done and a reasonable idea of what would happen in the region--and here in the U.S.--after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.