Making His Case

By Karen Tumulty/Washington

Just hours after President Bush indicated that he would soon ask Congress to vote on whether to wage war against Iraq, he dispatched one of his best men to make the case. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his way last Wednesday to a secure, windowless room on the top floor of the Capitol, nearly three-quarters of the Senators awaited him. They were confronting one of the gravest decisions lawmakers can face--sending troops into battle--and they expected to see the intelligence Rumsfeld and other Bush Administration officials have said would clinch the case that Saddam Hussein must go, the sooner the better. Instead, they got the kind of riff Rumsfeld uses with the Pentagon press corps. "There are three issues here," the Defense Secretary told them. "There is the issue of what we know. There is the issue of what we don't know. And there is the issue of what we don't know we don't know."

So much for a smoking gun. Rumsfeld's presentation left even stalwarts of the President's party unhappy. "We want to be with you," Oklahoma Senator Don Nickles, the Senate's second-ranking Republican, finally told him. "But you're not giving us enough." The following day, the White House and State Department phoned Senators to assess the damage. Not a fatal setback, they concluded, but the mess in Room S-407 showed that the President will have to work hard to convince Congress and the American public that a war with Iraq is in the national interest. Congress normally gives a popular Commander in Chief what he wants, but Bush has a mountain of skepticism to overcome. As Senate majority leader Tom Daschle put it, "I'm more concerned about getting this done right than getting it done quickly."

This isn't just another military adventure. This would be unlike any other war the nation has waged. Bush & Co. aren't responding to cross-border aggression or an assault on American citizens or interests. To use the President's language, this would be "pre-emptive," launched against a country that has not--yet--attacked the U.S. or its allies.

It's no wonder there isn't a consensus: a recent poll by the Pew Research Center showed that while 64% of Americans supported U.S. military action to oust Saddam Hussein, only 30% would favor going in without allies. In the very week that an anniversary reminds America of the lethal nature of its enemies, is it easier or harder for the President to stand before the United Nations and the American people and defend a plan to continue that war by launching another one? A year after 9/11, does Bush have to prove some connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden, or is it enough that since that day, Americans have the dark imagination to see what an enemy can do to destroy us? With each new speech, each meeting with congressional leaders, each Op-Ed salvo, the Administration is speaking to a curious and conflicted public. Is this war really necessary? Do we have to fight it now? Will we have to fight it alone? And will starting a war have consequences like more terrorist attacks at home and abroad?

Administration officials are still working out their plan for answering those questions in a way that will show Americans that war, as terrible as it is, is the least costly course possible. Saddam, they will argue, is dangerous now and will grow only more dangerous as he builds his arsenal of gases and poisons and searches for a nuclear weapon. There is a sense, at least inside the Beltway, that Bush will eventually win the support he needs. But the issues haven't yet been fully aired, and to the extent that there has been debate, it has occurred largely within the President's party, between the brain trust of the current President Bush and the veterans of his father's Administration. Democrats have been nearly silent on the merits of an invasion, perhaps because there's no point wasting a bullet when, for now, there are plenty of Republicans to do it for them (and perhaps because so many Dems have been in Washington long enough to regret their votes against the first President Bush's war against Saddam).

With the country hurtling toward possible conflict, it's almost hard to recall how much in disarray the Administration's Iraq policy was just a week or two ago. Before the President launched his new offensive, the oddly public dissension among his top aides threatened to unhinge his war wagon altogether. Vice President Dick Cheney articulated the hard line, arguing that inaction was tantamount to appeasement, even as Secretary of State Colin Powell talked up a far milder next step: getting U.N. arms inspectors back into Iraq. So jarring had been the dissonance that when Bush summoned congressional leaders to the White House last Wednesday to ask lawmakers to unite behind his Iraq policy, House International Relations Committee chairman Henry Hyde said the President's team should do so first. "The Administration has to speak with one voice," he said.

Intentionally or not, by pushing lawmakers to focus on Iraq, the Administration is deflecting issues that might have caused trouble for the Republicans this election season, like the shaky economy, shrinking 401(k)s and a litany of CEO wrongdoing. A popular President is pushing Congress to vote on Iraq before Election Day, Nov. 5, and the timing could put lawmakers on the spot. Early this year, Bush adviser Karl Rove boasted, "We can go to the country on this [war on terrorism] issue because they trust the Republican Party to do a better job of protecting and strengthening America's military might and thereby protecting America." That said, some Democratic strategists still insist that come November pocketbook issues, not Iraq, will drive the election. Recent history bolsters the argument: in the 1990 midterm election, another time of economic malaise, Republicans lost eight House seats and one Senate seat, even as the first President Bush was sending troops by the thousands to the Persian Gulf.

But at least for the moment, the sudden emphasis on Iraq has thrown politicians off their game. At county fairs in Nebraska over the August recess, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel was stunned to get almost as many questions about war as demands for disaster assistance against the drought. In Maine, Senator Susan Collins says, she was hearing about Iraq as often as about jobs and the economy. And at a retirement community in a Maryland suburb, elderly voters gave Democratic House candidate Mark Shriver an earful on Iraq before bringing up Social Security and the cost of prescription drugs. "People are confused," Shriver says. "They're confused about the answers to some pretty tough questions."

Tough questions, but not new ones. Bush has been building his case since he branded Iraq a member of the "axis of evil" in his State of the Union speech in January. He made a more explicit argument for pre-emptive action in a June talk at West Point, in which he argued that "new threats require new thinking" and warned, "If we wait for threats to fully materialize, we will have waited too long." But without fresh evidence of Iraqi chemical, biological or nuclear weapons ready to be fired at the U.S., it will be difficult for the White House to answer the central question: Why now? Why, 11 years later, is Saddam any more of a threat than he was when the first President Bush left him in power? What's different, Bush will argue again and again, is that today America knows it is vulnerable to attack in a way never dreamed possible on Sept. 10, 2001. At the President's meeting with congressional leaders, Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin made the case for containing rather than deposing the Iraqi dictator. Bush wouldn't hear of it, replying, as one aide paraphrased him: "That's not an option after 9/11."

Indeed, the debate on Iraq carries strong echoes of 9/11. After last year's attacks, Bush won praise for effectively framing issues in terms of good vs. evil. With Iraq, those are the tough arguments he has to make; they are less about what Saddam has than about who he is and what he purportedly wants. To help make the case, the White House is working hard to track down one graphic exhibit: a video, which Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan has told Bush about, that is said to show Saddam presiding over the execution of political opponents.

But moral principles gain their power by being consistently applied. If it is dangerous for ruthless dictators to develop lethal arsenals, why attack Iraq but not North Korea? If the Iraqi people deserve to live in a free and democratic state, why don't the Saudi people? If we are willing to pay the price of toppling Saddam, will we also pay the price of staying to clean up the neighborhood? And the thorniest question of all: If the last Gulf War helped inspire evil in bin Laden, will a new one create many more like him?

It would help Bush's argument if he didn't seem to be the only world leader making it. In his address to the U.N. this week, Bush plans to sound a more internationalist theme than the world has heard from him in a long while. White House officials say Bush will not initially ask for a new resolution from the Security Council. Instead, by listing the ways in which Saddam has flouted its will, Bush is expected to challenge the U.N. to defend its credibility. "He's going to be very blunt," says an aide. "He's going to say 'Your credibility is at stake. You have to decide whether you're relevant.'" One possible option: Bush may set a deadline for Iraq to comply with existing U.N. resolutions.

Ultimately, though, Administration officials concede that Bush will probably have to call for--and do the hard diplomatic work that it takes to win--a new U.N. resolution that gives him the authorization to act. He will need the world's backing for the same reason that he had to turn to Congress for support despite his White House counsel's view that he already has the legal and constitutional authority to launch an attack on his own. Bush's executive experience may have persuaded him to set a goal, but his political skills are what it will take to achieve it. Consensus building may be a time-consuming task, but it is a necessary one before a democracy declares war. --With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington

With reporting by Massimo Calabresi, James Carney, John F. Dickerson and Douglas Waller/Washington