Posted on 09/05/2002 7:48:21 AM PDT by TaRaRaBoomDeAyGoreLostToday!
Bush May Appear Before Joint Session
By Paul Kane and John Bresnahan
Several leading Republicans and strategists have also openly discussed the possibility that Bush could deliver a nationally televised pitch on Iraq before a joint session of Congress in the coming weeks, roughly a year after his Sept. 20, 2001, Congressional address kicking off the war on terror.
Some senior Democrats gave every indication that they were expecting several weeks of tough hearings that would explore all the issues involved in attempting to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. And Senate Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S.D.) publicly expressed concern about the "politicization" of the impending war vote.
Top strategists in both parties said it was unclear what the emergence of the Iraq debate would do to the political environment so close to the elections, although conventional wisdom has held that Democrats benefit from a campaign that stays away from terrorism, national security and the military and instead focuses on bread-and-butter economic fights.
The fast-approaching Iraq debate, however, emerging as the Senate is considering the formation of a Department of Homeland Security, overshadowed media coverage of Tuesday's 355-point plunge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. And the vote on Iraq could have reverberations for years to come, a fact certain to be on the minds of Democrats considering White House bids against Bush in 2004.
If Bush can more strongly articulate his case to take on Hussein, one of those potential aspirants, House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), is likely to support an Iraq resolution, a reversal of his position on the Persian Gulf War.
"This is a big moment," said a senior House Democratic aide, who emphasized that Gephardt supports the concept of "regime change" in Iraq. "I think they've got to do it right and they can get a big bipartisan vote on this."
Republicans face their own fissures on the matter. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas), the most outspoken GOP critic of the policy on Iraq, has informed the White House that he would "stand down for a week" on his criticism of plans to confront Iraq, which he recently called a "sovereign state" that should not be attacked without any provocation, an Armey aide said. Armey, who is retiring at the end of the year, told the White House he will wait to make up his mind on the issue until after Bush's Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations. The speech is being viewed as the first major public pleading for international support of Bush's policy of "regime change" in Iraq.
Many Members are also awaiting the briefings they expect to receive from administration officials on the situation. But lawmakers are already mapping out plans for hearings and beginning to think about the wording of resolutions authorizing an attack on Iraq. Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he expects to hold two or three weeks of hearings on the issue, beginning later this month and probably lasting through the first week of October.
Emerging from a Senators-only briefing with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday, Levin remained highly skeptical of the need to attack Iraq. "I don't think they added anything," Levin remarked of the secretary's briefing.
Levin said he has seen little intelligence indicating that Hussein will use in a first strike weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological or nuclear - because he knows the response from the world would be to completely eliminate his regime. "Is he a survivalist or a suicide bomber?" Levin asked, saying he believes Hussein's highest priority is staying in power.
Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has been in Washington only briefly since his father died earlier this week and is expected to lay out his plans for hearings early next week, according to aides.
Senate Republicans began crafting their own strategy for hearings and weighing what they want to see in a war resolution at a Wednesday afternoon meeting of leaders and key members of the Armed Services, Foreign Relations and Intelligence panels. At this point, there is unanimous agreement among GOP leaders that Bush will send some form of resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq.
"We will deal with that before we leave for the fall elections," said Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who serves as Minority Leader Trent Lott's (R-Miss.) counsel and attended Wednesday's gathering on Iraq in Lott's office.
Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Texas) told a closed-door meeting of House GOP leaders Wednesday to expect a vote before leaving town for the elections, a departure that is currently slated for Oct. 4 but could easily be pushed back a week because of the increasing workload.
"I think that's the way the president and everyone is leaning," said GOP Conference Vice Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (Ohio). "[Bush] is calling on us to be a lot more engaged in this."
Some Democrats, including Daschle and Levin, were still operating under the assumption that the war resolution is only a "possibility" before the elections. "[Bush] has not indicated in my view with any certainty that he will do that, but that is a possibility," Daschle said after a Wednesday morning meeting of Bush and Hill leaders.
Senate Majority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.), however, said he believes that a resolution will be arriving shortly, something he'll reserve judgment until he reads the exact wording. "We have to wait and see what he sends us. It's up to him to give it to us, just as his father did," Reid said, referring to the 1991 debate on the Gulf War.
House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) plans to begin holding open and closed hearings with top Bush officials within two weeks, and the House Armed Service Committee will also hold hearings, although its timetable remains unclear.
A top House GOP aide said Hastert has signaled to Bush that he should come before a joint session of Congress to make his case to lawmakers and the American public that Hussein must be removed, an appeal similar to one Hastert made to President Bill Clinton before his 1999 campaign to expel the Serb military from Kosovo. "I think he's made clear to Bush that would be a good idea," the aide said.
Senate Minority Whip Don Nickles (R-Okla.), who pointedly asked Bush at a White House meeting Wednesday if he would ask Congress for consent on an attack before the elections, said the idea of a joint session was being discussed, but nothing had been finalized. "It's his call," he said of Bush.
Bush's Sept. 20 address last year, coming just nine days after the Sept. 11 attacks, was widely regarded as the capstone to a transformation in how the president was perceived by the public, from a neophyte in international affairs who hadn't even won the popular vote to a global leader trying to snuff out terrorism around the world.
Even before the level of intensity on the Iraq debate took off, Republicans were trying to shift the public's focus away from the issues of corporate accountability and plummeting pensions and onto homeland and global security.
Senators arriving for their weekly luncheon of the informal GOP Steering Committee in the ornate Mansfield Room off the chamber floor were greeted by a large blue sign hanging just below a portrait of George Washington. The sign read: "Message of the Week." Under that headline were two bullets, one highlighting the homeland security debate as the "highest priority" of Congress and the other noting "Defense First," a plea that the House and Senate quickly wrap up the Defense appropriations bill.
But Sen. Bill Frist (Tenn.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that he wasn't sure if the public issue agenda had yet shifted from three major issues he found in the 15 states he traveled through in August: prescription drugs, corporate responsibility and Social Security. Iraq was talked about, but not as an issue in a single race, Frist said.
His counterpart at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Sen. Patty Murray (Wash.), said that people can still feel a 355-point plunge in the Dow in their own pocketbooks, even if it's not on the front pages. "That is absolutely still a critical issue," she said.
But Daschle noted that there are "skeptics out there who wonder to what extent the political implications of any of this may affect the elections."
"In order to ensure that there isn't any charge of politicization in such a sensitive international and national matter, I think it is critical that we take great care that timing and all other issues are taken into account," he said.
Susan Crabtree contributed to this report.
Don't know on those, but if memory serves me correctly, there was less than a week's debate on Desert Storm before the balloon went up then...
The Spanish American War debates took a little less than a month, but the debates didn't start until about six or seven weeks after the Maine was destroyed in Havanna.
The debates to enter WWI lasted 4 days, April 2-6, 1917. But the quickness here was because of the continuous attacks against merchant vessels that had been occuring for the last 2 years. One newspaper wrote "The only difference between war and what we have now is that we are not fighting back."
Not only that, but their natural leftist tendencies are to vote against their own country that they hate so much. This will out them right before election and rightfully so because they asked for it.
Voting democrat will continually put the country's national defense in peril.
I can see it now. The House passes the war resolution in early Oct if not late Sept. The war will be over before the Dem Senate brings it to the floor.
Serves 'em right. Once again, they get hoist by their own petards.
He's stuck on this one, and his caucus is nervous as Hell.
Even PIAPS has to vote yes on this if she ever intends to run for president or re-election to the Senate.
I am sure I know whom this refers to, but I must ask, since I have not seen this acronym before, what PIAPS means. I am looking for a good laugh here, so I hope I won't be dissapointed.
Almost sounds like the dreaded pap smear she is.
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