Inouye, Akaka join critics who say Bush hasn't justified war
Advertiser Staff and News Services
WASHINGTON — An edgy Congress, confronting the growing prospect of war with Iraq, rallied behind U.S. troops yesterday despite some lawmakers' concerns that President Bush had not built a broader international coalition of allies for the conflict.
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But Hawai'i's congressional delegation said Bush still has not made a good case for war and has not provided important details about how long the war will last, how much it will cost and how postwar reconstruction of Iraq would work.
Sen. Daniel Akaka
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle
Sen. Dan Inouye
"It will be a war without broad international support, without sufficient planning for post-conflict reconstruction and stability, without a definite exit time and strategy, and without a firm price tag," said Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawai'i, in remarks he intended to present for the record in the Senate.
Akaka, along with Sen. Dan Inouye, D-Hawai'i, and Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i, voted last fall against giving Bush the authority to use military force against Iraq if diplomatic efforts failed. That resolution was approved by large margins in the House and Senate.
Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawai'i, who has said he would likely have voted for the war-powers resolution had he been in Congress last fall, said yesterday that he agreed with Bush that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction but was less convinced about its ties to al-Qaida. Case said he still hoped for a peaceful resolution during the 48-hour deadline that Bush gave Saddam. "I think one has to hold out hope for diplomacy," Case said.
Inouye has argued that a pre-emptive U.S. attack is not yet justified. "While I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator that has brought pain and suffering to the citizens of Iraq, I do not believe the United States should strike pre-emptively without evidence of an imminent threat to our national security," he said.
The uncertainty about war costs is casting a long shadow over Congress' debate this week on the annual budget resolution, a measure that is the first test of Bush's ability to win the $726-billion tax-cut measure he has proposed to stimulate the economy. Democrats — and some Republicans — want to postpone a decision on the tax cut until after more is known about war expenses and their impact on the already-burgeoning budget deficit.
Bush moved to solidify congressional support for his Iraqi policy yesterday by briefing House and Senate leaders at the White House a few hours before he gave a televised address to the nation. After he departed the meeting, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice stayed to answer questions.
Afterward, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del., the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said: "I think we have no alternative now" but to support the imminent war.
Bush's efforts to rally international support in the United Nations for action against Iraq met with more opposition than many U.S. officials anticipated. Yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said, "I'm saddened; saddened that this president failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to war."
Derrick DePledge of the Advertiser's Washington Bureau contributed to this report.
