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Lawmakers debate Iraq resolution
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The resolution President Bush hopes Congress will pass authorizing the use of force against Iraq is "much too broad," the chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee said Sunday. The White House submitted a draft resolution Thursday that drew immediate criticism from Senate Democratic leaders even as they continued to back Bush's contention that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Michigan, told "Fox News Sunday" that Republicans and Democrats alike want changes in the wording. Of particular concern to Levin is the resolution's last line, which authorizes the use of force to "defend the national security interests of the United States against the threat posed by Iraq, and restore international peace and security in the region." "It's not even limited to Iraq," Levin said. "And there's just simply no limits on it. It's a go-it-alone resolution ... very unilateral." Levin said that the backing of the United Nations would be essential to any operation to oust Saddam. "I want him to look down the barrel of a gun with the world behind it, so that it's not just the United States versus Saddam, it's the world versus Saddam," he said. Disagreement on whether U.N. backing neededBut other lawmakers -- particularly Republicans -- disputed that Bush needs U.N. support for a strike against Iraq or even that the president's draft resolution is too vague. "I don't [have a problem with the resolution's language] because I think that we are the last nation, whether we like it or not, that has the capability to deal with some of these problems that are regional as well as global," U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Florida, said on Fox. "I think we have to be engaged in it." U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, said he thought "the resolution is well-written." "If you have a crimped set of words in there that have to be subject to interpretation or revisiting with subsequent resolutions, you don't have the authority that the president will need," he said on ABC's "This Week." "The president should not be constrained in where we send forces." U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Illinois Republican who chairs the House International Relations Committee, said the administration has no intention of fighting elsewhere in the Middle East, calling such fears "far-fetched." "I personally am satisfied with that language," Hyde said on CNN's "Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer," although he conceded the wording likely would be changed because of what he called "specious" and "erroneous" objections. U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told ABC he wouldn't necessarily change the language, "but I think we need to have a better definition as to what that means." U.S. Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, said the wording absolutely would change, but he did not foresee problems. "That won't be the language," he told "Late Edition." "The administration sent us a draft resolution and made it clear that they want to talk about it." Hagel, citing the securing of a U.N. resolution to go to war against Iraq in 1991, said he believed Bush and the United Nations would find "common ground." But Kyl, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said previous resolutions from the United Nations have been ineffectual. "It's obvious," he said, "that we can't go to the United Nations or that we can't rely on the United Nations to grant us the authority that we will need." To Levin, however, U.N. support is crucial. "The United Nations should issue the ultimatum, put down very clear dates ... and I believe that the United Nations should authorize member states to use force to implement those resolutions," Levin said. And Congress, he said, "should adopt a resolution urging the United Nations to adopt the kind of resolution which I've just outlined." "Under those circumstances," he said, "we should authorize force to enforce that U.N. resolution." Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, diverged from Levin slightly. While U.N. support is important, Biden said on NBC's "Meet the Press," the United States "should reserve the right to move alone regardless of what the U.N. does." Leaders from both sides of the aisle said war with Saddam's regime is inevitable. "I believe that we will [go to war] for a broad variety of reasons ... including the fact that basically [Saddam] is a clear and present danger to the United States of America," said U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, on CBS' "Face the Nation." Biden told NBC that while "the president hasn't made that clear yet ... that's the course we're on." But he told CNN he hasn't given up on finding a peaceful solution to the Iraqi problem.
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