Gephardt Pushes Consensus Action Against Iraq Threat(Gephardt knows which way the wind blows)

At President Bush's meeting with Congressional leaders Sept. 10, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) arrived late. House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) got a laugh with the crack, "I'll be happy to take his place." When Hastert finally arrived, Bush - who hates tardiness - told him, "Gephardt tried to pull a coup in your absence."

Actually, Gephardt wants to pull a coup on both Hastert and Bush, becoming Speaker after this year's elections and president in 2004.

But for the moment, Gephardt is emerging as Bush's most powerful Democratic ally in the run-up to his climactic confrontation with Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

According to an attendee at the Sept. 10 meeting - held two days before Bush's speech to the United Nations - Gephardt declared full support for Bush's policy of regime change in Iraq.

"He was very strong, he was pointed. There were no weasel words, no 'give us more evidence,' no circumlocutions."

This witness quoted Gephardt as saying, "Regime change in Iraq has been the declared policy of the United States and it should be our policy. Saddam Hussein is a bad guy. We've got to get him out of there. You have my full support."

Gephardt told me in an interview that he will not arm-twist fellow Democrats to support Bush's policy, but that he will continue saying what he thinks - that the Sept. 11 attacks make it all too possible that Hussein could hand off a weapon of mass destruction to a terrorist group for use against the United States.

Countering anti-war forces in the Democratic Caucus led by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) and Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), he's arguing that the Sept. 11 attacks should "lower the level of proof" required before taking action against Hussein.

At the Sept. 10 meeting, a witness said, Pelosi told the president, "You haven't convinced me" of the need for action and urged that he make nuclear nonproliferation a higher priority of his administration.

On the basis of what I've heard from and about Gephardt, I clearly was wrong to write last week that he's among the Democratic presidential aspirants who's showing less than presidential-level leadership in the Iraq crisis. He's leading in his trademark fashion - by tireless listening and consensus-building.

Gephardt describes himself as a "progressive internationalist." He's clearly no Republican hawk of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld stripe. He does not believe, as they do, in threatening unilateral, pre-emptive action as a means of pushing the U.S. policy agenda on the world.

"We're part of a little-bitty planet now," he told me, "and we've got to advance America's interests in an international setting by trying to work with other countries."

In fact, he said, he'd handle the U.N. Security Council the way he does the Democratic Caucus, by "patient consultation" and "practicing international 'small-d' democracy."

Gephardt has not turned into a born-again Reaganite, either. He does not believe that Ronald Reagan's pressure caused the Soviet collapse.

"I think that information technology probably had more to do with bringing down communism than anything else - and people understanding the failure of communism, as opposed to democracy and capitalism."

In 1991, then-Majority Leader Gephardt led opposition to Bush's father's request for immediate authority to go to war when Hussein invaded Kuwait. Gephardt argued that economic sanctions should be given more time to work. "Before we send our children to war," he said on the House floor, "we [must] have done everything in our power to reach our goals without war. In my heart and mind we cannot say that today."

Both House and Senate Democrats overwhelmingly opposed the Persian Gulf War. Gephardt told me, "In hindsight, it was not correct to believe that extending sanctions would cause Saddam Hussein" to abandon Kuwait.

Gephardt said it would be better to solve the current threat diplomatically if possible.

"I think it's exceedingly important to exhaust every possible human effort to get the United Nations to enact a credible, robust resolution to get this done diplomatically," he said.

On the other hand, as he said in a major speech in June, Gephardt favors using "military means if we must to eliminate the threat [Hussein] poses to the region and our own security."

Anti-war Democrats contend - as Pelosi did Sept. 10 - that Bush hasn't presented iron-clad evidence that Hussein presents an imminent danger to the United States.

But Gephardt said he's seen "a large body of intelligence information over a long time that he is working on and has weapons of mass destruction. Before 1991, he was close to having a nuclear device. Now, you'll get a debate about whether it's one year away or five or six.

"But I come back to September 11. The standard of proof that you look for has to be reduced because of the presence of large numbers of terrorists and the whole history of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.

"Yes, they could go to Iran, North Korea or Russia for nuclear devices. But if you're looking for the most likely place, it's Iraq. ... Our highest responsibility is to keep people safe in this country. We've got to do whatever that takes."

Gephardt aides figure Democratic opposition to Bush's policy can be held to 50 or 75 members of the 211-person Caucus, as opposed to 180 in 1991. Once again, Gephardt will be a key factor.

Gephardt aides figure Democratic opposition to Bush's policy can be held to 50 or 75 members of the 211-person Caucus, as opposed to 180 in 1991.

The vote is in the bag. Poor RATS and DUmmies.

Yeah, the Internet was really popular in 1989. [/sarcasm]

That comment caught my eye too. When you think about it, it's pretty damn scary that people with as much power as Gephardt have such demonstrably loony ideas.

Ideally we can beef the language up enough to get some of them to vote against it. Wellstone and Johnson both voted against the 91 resolution. We don't want this one watered down so much that they can find a way to vote for it.

Voting against a use-of-force resolution on Iraq is exactly what we need to knock them off.

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