US: A calculated process of consultation on Iraq was signalled yesterday by President Bush, writes James Harding
President George W. Bush issued a call to action in characteristically homespun terms yesterday:
"For 11 long years, Saddam Hussein has side-stepped, crawfished, wheedled out of any agreement he had made not to harbour, not to develop weapons of mass destruction," he said after meeting congressional leaders at the White House. The Iraqi leader, he added, was "stiffing the world", and doing nothing about that serious threat was not an option for the United States.
But, behind the folksy style, a calculated process of consultation on the road to deposing Saddam Hussein has now begun.
Mr Bush has embarked on a strategy aimed at engaging the world in his efforts to change the regime.
Mr Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister and the Bush administration's most supportive ally, has been invited to Camp David this weekend as the president prepares to address the international community.
Mr Bush said that he would be speaking to foreign leaders by telephone in the coming days. He also signalled that he would be more specific about how to address the Iraqi threat when he spoke to the UN General Assembly in New York next Thursday. "I am going to state clearly to the United Nations what I think," he said. "I will talk about ways to make sure that he fulfils his obligations."
In the margins of the UN meeting, White House aides are also planning bilateral meetings and private talks with foreign leaders.
Some hawkish commentators in the US have advocated a swift, pre-emptive action in the coming weeks to precipitate a coup in Baghdad. However, the prospect of congressional hearings and an effort to engage international support or, at least, acquiescence in the event of military action suggest a slower and more deliberate process.
But the ultimate aim was plainly understood by congressional leaders yesterday to be the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
The President dodged what has become the vexed issue of sending weapons inspectors back to Iraq by saying that the issue was not inspections, but disarmament.
The Bush administration has been clear that inspections cannot provide safe assurance that Iraq is not developing weapons of mass destruction.
The olive branch which the President offered Congress yesterday marked an important turning point in the administration's case against Saddam Hussein.
In promising to seek congressional approval for whatever action he ultimately decides to take, Mr Bush bowed to historical precedent, but he did not move fast enough to avoid what promises to be a lively debate in Congress over how far the US should go against Iraq.
Mr Tom Daschle, the Senate's Democratic majority leader, captured that sentiment yesterday when he emerged from a White House meeting between congressional leaders and Mr Bush.
"We're hoping for more information and greater clarity in the days and weeks ahead," he said.
The role Congress sees for itself in the run-up to war is steeped partly in tradition and partly in a sense of entitlement. The constitution gives the president the right to declare war, but it gives Congress ways to counter that power.
In 1973, Congress passed the War Powers Act in response to public alarm that unchecked presidential prerogative during the Vietnam war had led to an unacceptable toll on American lives. However, most presidents since have chafed at Congress's insistence on a role at the war-planning table. Mr Bush's father secured United Nations and congressional support in the days leading up to the air war in the Gulf in 1991, a diplomatic route cited as a model for his son.
White House legal scholars have insisted that such resolutions are not necessary. Politically, however, they are clearly a way to build essential public support and mollify congressional critics.
The true sentiments of George Bush snr about courting Congress were revealed later when he told a gathering of the Texas Republican Party: "I didn't have to get permission from some old goat in the United States Congress to kick Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait."