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Will
Bush take permission from Congress?
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WASHINGTON,
August 28 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) –The U.S. State
Department made an attempt Tuesday, August 27, to quell an
international outcry over strong anti-Saddam Hussein remarks made by
Vice President Dick Cheney, insisting that the United States was not
beating “war drums” on Iraq, as Congress said that despite White
House claims, the administration needs congressional approval before
any attack on Iraq.
The
U.S. Constitution requires that President George W. Bush get
congressional approval for an attack on Iraq, former defense secretary
William Cohen told CNN Monday, August 26.
“I
think anything less than that will put the President in a difficult
political position if the war that has yet to be waged in his own mind
does not go well,” Cohen said.
Cohen,
a Republican former senator and defense secretary under former
president Bill Clinton, said he gave the same advice to Bush’s
father, former president George Bush, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in
1990.
And
even putting legal questions aside, lawmakers say Bush needs
Congressional approval before sending American troops to attack Iraq
because it is the right thing to do.
Republican
Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, however, did not mince words,
commenting, “I don’t play this game so much on what’s legal and
what’s not legal,” he said of a U.S. attack on Iraq. “If the
president is going to commit this nation to war, he’d better have
the support of the Congress and the American people with him.”
“The
president has to get congressional approval,” said House Democratic
leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri, speaking in Waterbury, Connecticut
“He must have a debate on this issue and a vote in the
Congress.”
“For
the good of the country and for the long-term success of whatever
approach we take, President Bush should follow his father’s lead and
support a vigorous and constructive debate on Iraq,” said Democrat
Sen. Patrick Leahy through a spokesman.
Earlier
Monday, Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer said White House lawyers
concluded the president did not need congressional approval to launch
an attack against Iraq.
At
the State Department, spokesman Richard Boucher said that despite
Cheney’s comments, Bush had still not decided on any course of
action, including military intervention, to pursue his policy of
regime change in Iraq, and thus Washington was not trying to
“sell” a war plan to anyone.
“The
characterization of war drums I don’t think is accurate,” Boucher
told reporters when asked about a speech Cheney delivered on Monday,
in which he said that toppling Saddam could not be put off.
“We
have made clear, the White House has made clear, the president himself
has made clear [that] he has not decided on what options to pursue,
and therefore there are no war drums to beat,” Boucher said.
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| Hagel:
If the president is going to commit this nation to war, he’d
better have the support of the Congress and the American
people with him.
|
“The
president has not decided, so there’s no option to enlist people’s
support for,” he said. “There’s no war drum to beat. There’s
no particular course of action that we’re trying to sell right
now.”
“At
this moment, we’re not selling a war plan, because the president’s
not decided what option he wants to pursue.”
At
the same time, Boucher stressed that regime change remained U.S.
policy for Iraq, and added that Saddam Hussein’s quest for weapons
of mass destruction posed a dangerous threat to the rest of the world.
“There
is no question of the threat that Iraq represents to the international
community,” he said. “There is no question that Iraq’s
development of weapons of mass destruction is a serious danger to us
all.”
"We
need to face up to this fact and we need to deal with it, sooner
rather than later," Boucher said.
Cheney’s
speech, in which the vice president issued a forceful call for action
against Saddam, pre-emptive if necessary, has drawn widespread
criticism abroad, including from U.S. allies in Europe and the Middle
East.
German
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the call for possible pre-emptive
action had been a “mistake.”
Egyptian
President Hosni Mubarak warned that no Arab government could support a
strike against Iraq while Israel was continuing its occupation of
Palestinian lands without risking a popular outcry.
Similar
comments have come from senior Saudi and Jordanian officials, as well.
Meanwhile,
U.S. and British aircraft on Tuesday struck an air defense command and
control facility in southern Iraq in response to “hostile acts”,
the U.S. military said in a statement.
“In
response to recent Iraqi hostile acts against coalition aircraft
monitoring the southern no-fly zone [coalition] aircraft used
precision-guided weapons today to strike an air defense command and
control facility” in the southern part of the country, the statement
said.
“Target
battle damage assessment is ongoing,” said U.S. Central Command, or
Centcom, of the strike near An Nukhayb.
The
last coalition strike in the southern no-fly zone, imposed on Iraq
following the 1991 Gulf War, was against two air defense radar systems
on August 25.
Iraq
refuses to recognize both southern and northern no-fly zones, and
claims that U.S. and British warplane strikes have killed 1,484 people
over the past 11 years.
Centcom
insists that coalition aircraft do not target civilian populations and
"go to painstaking lengths to avoid injury to civilians and
damage to civilian facilities."
According
to the U.S. Central Command, there have been more than 120 incidents
of Iraqi surface surface-to-air missile and anti-aircraft artillery
fire directed against coalition aircraft this year.
