Senators say Iraq Resolution Should Wait
By Marty Toohey
WASHINGTON, Sept. 11, 2002–In separate conference calls with reporters Wednesday, Senators Joe Lieberman and Christopher Dodd urged the Bush administration to delay asking Congress for a resolution on Iraq unless there is an overwhelming case for immediate action.
Dodd advocated waiting for international support, and while Lieberman agreed, he said his main concern was that a resolution would be “more thoughtful and less charged with partisanship after the elections.”
The administration has yet to make a strong case for immediate action, the two Democratic senators said.
Bush will speak today at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City and was expected to lay out his goal of ousting Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. He was also expected to tell the world leaders that if Baghdad does not agree to allow U.N. weapons inspectors in, the United States might strike unilaterally against Iraq, even without the consent of the U.N. Security Council.
This might estrange the United States from the international community, Lieberman and Dodd said, and if Bush shows the “Clint Eastwood attitude of taking care of all the bad guys in town” he won’t win the international support that could pass a resolution through Congress, Dodd, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, warned.
“This ought not be a burden we bear alone,” Dodd said. “To go into the Middle East alone … is a very precarious road to follow.”
Lieberman, who sits on the Armed Services Committee, said he’s felt since the Gulf War that Hussein should be removed from power, and said that everything he’s heard “validates that (Hussein) is building weapons of mass destruction” that can reach targets like Israel.
Lieberman also pointed out that in the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998 Congress declared it American policy to remove Saddam Hussein from power and establish a democracy in his place.
Published in The New Britain Herald, in Connecticut.
