ZGram - 10/5/2002 - "A Byrd against the Hawks"

[irimland@zundelsite.org]

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

October 5, 2002

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

Below is another Voice of Reason from an American elected official. 
Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virgina puts America's interests 
first, free of the heated hyperbole of the so-called "conservative" 
war hawks who promote only the Israeli Agenda and plan to use 
America's power to weaken or destroy nations, states, ideologies and 
movements that are perceived as threatening to Israeli-Jewish 
interests.

[START]

Senator Byrd delivered the following remarks as the Senate opened 
debate on Senate Joint Resolution 46, a resolution authorizing the 
President to use whatever force he deems necessary in Iraq or 
elsewhere.

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The great Roman historian, Titus Livius, said, "All things will be 
clear and distinct to the man who does not hurry; haste is blind and 
improvident."

"Blind and improvident," Mr. President. "Blind and improvident." 
Congress would be wise to heed those words today, for as sure as the 
sun rises in the east, we are embarking on a course of action with 
regard to Iraq that, in its haste, is both blind and improvident. We 
are rushing into war without fully discussing why, without thoroughly 
considering the consequences, or without making any attempt to 
explore what steps we might take to avert conflict.

The newly bellicose mood that permeates this White House is 
unfortunate, all the moreso because it is clearly motivated by 
campaign politics. Republicans are already running attack ads against 
Democrats on Iraq. Democrats favor fast approval of a resolution so 
they can change the subject to domestic economic problems. (NY Times 
9/20/2002)

Before risking the lives of American troops, all members of Congress 
- Democrats and Republicans alike - must overcome the siren song of 
political polls and focus strictly on the merits, not the politics, 
of this most serious issue.

The resolution before us today is not only a product of haste; it is 
also a product of presidential hubris. This resolution is 
breathtaking in its scope. It redefines the nature of defense, and 
reinterprets the Constitution to suit the will of the Executive 
Branch. It would give the President blanket authority to launch a 
unilateral preemptive attack on a sovereign nation that is perceived 
to be a threat to the United States. This is an unprecedented and 
unfounded interpretation of the President's authority under the 
Constitution, not to mention the fact that it stands the charter of 
the United Nations on its head.

Representative Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to William H. Herndon, 
stated: "Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation whenever 
he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to 
do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such 
purpose - - and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see 
if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have 
given him so much as you propose. If, to-day, he should choose to say 
he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from 
invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no 
probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be 
silent; I see it, if you don't.'

"The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to 
Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. 
Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in 
wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the 
people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most 
oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame 
the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing 
this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter, and 
places our President where kings have always stood."

If he could speak to us today, what would Lincoln say of the Bush 
doctrine concerning preemptive strikes?

In a September 18 report, the Congressional Research Service had this 
to say about the preemptive use of military force:


The historical record indicates that the United States has never, to 
date, engaged in a "preemptive" military attack against another 
nation. Nor has the United States ever attacked another nation 
militarily prior to its first having been attacked or prior to U.S. 
citizens or interests first having been attacked, with the singular 
exception of the Spanish-American War. The Spanish-American War is 
unique in that the principal goal of United States military action 
was to compel Spain to grant Cuba its political independence.


The Congressional Research Service also noted that the Cuban Missile 
Crisis of 1962 "represents a threat situation which some may argue 
had elements more parallel to those presented by Iraq today - but it 
was resolved without a "preemptive" military attack by the United 
States."

Article I, Section 8, of the Constitution grants Congress the power 
to declare war and to call forth the militia "to execute the Laws of 
the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions." Nowhere in 
the Constitution is it written that the President has the authority 
to call forth the militia to preempt a perceived threat. And yet, the 
resolution before the Senate avers that the President "has authority 
under the Constitution to take action in order to deter and prevent 
acts of international terrorism against the United States, as 
Congress recognized in the joint resolution on Authorization for Use 
of Miliary Force" following the September 11 terrorist attack. What a 
cynical twisting of words! The reality is that Congress, exercising 
the authority granted to it under the Constitution, granted the 
President specific and limited authority to use force against the 
perpetrators of the September 11 attack. Nowhere was there an implied 
recognition of inherent authority under the Constitution to "deter 
and prevent" future acts of terrorism.

Think for a moment of the precedent that this resolution will set, 
not just for this President but for future Presidents. From this day 
forward, American Presidents will be able to invoke Senate Joint 
Resolution 46 as justification for launching preemptive military 
strikes against any sovereign nations that they perceive to be a 
threat. Other nations will be able to hold up the United States as 
the model to justify their military adventures. Do you not think that 
India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, Russia and Georgia are closely 
watching the outcome of this debate? Do you not think that future 
adversaries will look to this moment to rationalize the use of 
military force to achieve who knows what ends?

Perhaps a case can be made that Iraq poses such a clear and immediate 
danger to the United States that preemptive military action is the 
only way to deal with the threat. To be sure, weapons of mass 
destruction are a 20th century horror that the Framers of the 
Constitution had no way of foreseeing. But they did foresee the 
frailty of human nature and the inherent danger of concentrating too 
much power in one individual. That is why the Framers bestowed on 
Congress, not the President, the power to declare war.

As James Madison wrote in 1793, "In no part of the constitution is 
more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the 
question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive 
department. Beside the objection to such a mixture to heterogeneous 
powers, the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one 
man...."

Congress has a responsibility to exercise with extreme care the power 
to declare war. There is no weightier matter to be considered. A war 
against Iraq will affect thousands if not tens of thousands of lives, 
and perhaps alter the course of history. It will surely affect the 
balance of power in the Middle East. It is not a decision to be taken 
in haste, under the glare of election year politics and the pressure 
of artificial deadlines. And yet any observer can see that that is 
exactly what the Senate is proposing to do.

The Senate is rushing to vote on whether to declare war on Iraq 
without pausing to ask why. Why is war being dealt with not as a last 
resort but as a first resort? Why is Congress being pressured to act 
now, as of today, 33 days before a general election when a third of 
the Senate and the entire House of Representatives are in the final, 
highly politicized, weeks of election campaigns? As recently as 
Tuesday (Oct. 1), the President said he had not yet made up his mind 
about whether to go to war with Iraq. And yet Congress is being 
exhorted to give the President open-ended authority now, to exercise 
whenever he pleases, in the event that he decides to invade Iraq. Why 
is Congress elbowing past the President to authorize a military 
campaign that the President may or may not even decide to pursue? 
Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves?

The last UN weapons inspectors left Iraq in October of 1998. We are 
confident that Saddam Hussein retained some stockpiles of chemical 
and biological weapons, and that he has since embarked on a crash 
course to build up his chemical and biological warfare capability. 
Intelligence reports also indicate that he is seeking nuclear 
weapons, but has not yet achieved nuclear capability. It is now 
October of 2002. Four years have gone by in which neither this 
administration nor the previous one felt compelled to invade Iraq to 
protect against the imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction. 
Until today. Until 33 days until election day. Now we are being told 
that we must act immediately, before adjournment and before the 
elections. Why the rush?

Yes, we had September 11. But we must not make the mistake of looking 
at the resolution before us as just another offshoot of the war on 
terror. We know who was behind the September 11 attacks on the United 
States. We know it was Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda terrorist 
network. We have dealt with al Qaeda and with the Taliban government 
that sheltered it - we have routed them from Afghanistan and we are 
continuing to pursue them in hiding.

So where does Iraq enter the equation? No one in the Administration 
has been able to produce any solid evidence linking Iraq to the 
September 11 attack. Iraq had biological and chemical weapons long 
before September 11. We knew it then, and we know it now. Iraq has 
been an enemy of the United States for more than a decade. If Saddam 
Hussein is such an imminent threat to the United States, why hasn't 
he attacked us already? The fact that Osama bin Laden attacked the 
United States does not, de facto, mean that Saddam Hussein is now in 
a lock and load position and is readying an attack on the United 
States. In truth, there is nothing in the deluge of Administration 
rhetoric over Iraq that is of such moment that it would preclude the 
Senate from setting its own timetable and taking the time for a 
thorough and informed discussion of this crucial issue.

The President is using the Oval Office as a bully pulpit to sound the 
call to arms, but it is from Capitol Hill that such orders must flow. 
The people, through their elected representatives, must make that 
decision. It is here that debate must take place and where the full 
spectrum of the public's desires, concerns, and misgivings must be 
heard. We should not allow ourselves to be pushed into one course or 
another in the face of a full court publicity press from the White 
House. We have, rather, a duty to the nation and her sons and 
daughters to carefully examine all possible courses of action and to 
consider the long term consequences of any decision to act.

As to separation of powers, Justice Louis Brandeis observed: "the 
doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the Convention of 
1787, not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of 
arbitrary power." (Myers v. United States, 1926)

No one supports Saddam Hussein. If he were to disappear tomorrow, no 
one would shed a tear around the world. I would not. My handkerchief 
would remain dry. But the principle of one government deciding to 
eliminate another government, using force to do so, and taking that 
action in spite of world disapproval, is a very disquieting thing. I 
am concerned that it has the effect of destabilizing the world 
community of nations. I am concerned that it fosters a climate of 
suspicion and mistrust in U.S. relations with other nations. The 
United States is not a rogue nation, given to unilateral action in 
the face of worldwide opprobrium.

I am also concerned about the consequences of a U.S. invasion of 
Iraq. It is difficult to imagine that Saddam Hussein, who has been 
ruthless in gaining and staying in power, would give up without a 
fight. He is a man who has not shirked from using chemical weapons 
against his own people. I fear that he would use everything in his 
arsenal against an invasion force, or against an occupation force, up 
to and including whatever chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons he 
might still have. Iraq is not Afghanistan, impoverished by decades of 
war, internal strife, and stifling religious oppression. Though its 
military forces are much diminished, Iraq has a strong central 
command and much greater governmental control over its forces and its 
people. It is a large country that has spent years on a wartime 
footing, and it still has some wealth.

Nor do I think that the Iraqi people would necessarily rise up 
against Saddam Hussein in the event of a U.S. invasion, even if there 
is an undercurrent of support for his overthrow. The Iraqi people 
have spent decades living in fear of Saddam Hussein and his network 
of informers and security forces. There has been no positive showing, 
in the form of riots or large and active internal opposition groups, 
that popular sentiment in Iraq supports a governmental overthrow or 
the installation of a democratic or republican form of government. 
There is no tradition of democracy in Iraq's long history. There is, 
however, a natural instinct to favor the known over the unknown, and 
in this instance, the U.S. is the unknown factor. The President and 
his cabinet have suggested that this would be a war of relatively 
short duration. If that is true, which I doubt, but if it were, why 
would the Iraqi populace rush out to welcome the U.S. forces. In a 
few weeks, they might have to answer to the remnants of Saddam 
Hussein's security forces. A prudent Iraqi would just put his or her 
head under the bedcovers and not come out until the future became 
clear.

A U.S. invasion of Iraq that proved successful and which resulted in 
the overthrow of the government would not be a simple effort. The 
aftermath of that effort would require a long term occupation. The 
President has said that he would overthrow Saddam Hussein and 
establish a new government that would recognize all interest groups 
in Iraq. This would presumably include the Kurds to the north and the 
Shiite Muslims to the south. Because the entire military and security 
apparatus of Iraq would have to be replaced, the U.S. would have to 
provide interim security throughout the countryside. This kind of 
nation-building cannot be accomplished with the wave of a wand by 
some fairy godmother, even one with the full might and power of the 
world's last remaining superpower behind her.

To follow through on the proposal outlined by the President would 
require the commitment of a large number of U.S. forces - forces that 
cannot be used for other missions, such as homeland defense - for an 
extended period of time. It will take time to confirm that Iraq's 
programs to develop weapons of mass destruction are well and truly 
destroyed. It will take time to root out all elements of Saddam 
Hussein's government, military, and security forces and to build new 
government and security elements. It will take time to establish a 
new and legitimate government and to conduct free and fair elections. 
It will cost billions of dollars to do this as well. And the forces 
to carry out this mission and to pay for this mission will come from 
the United States. There can be little question of that. If the rest 
of the world doesn't want to come with us at the outset, it seems 
highly unlikely that they would line up for the follow through, even 
though their own security might be improved by the elimination of a 
rogue nation's weapons of mass destruction. So, if the Congress 
authorizes such a mission, we must be prepared for what will follow.

The Congressional Budget Office has already made some estimations 
regarding the cost of a possible war with Iraq. In a September 30 
report, CBO estimates that the incremental costs - the costs that 
would be incurred above those budgeted for routine operations - would 
be between $9 billion to $13 billion a month, depending on the actual 
force size deployed. Prosecuting a war would cost between $6 billion 
and $9 billion a month. Since the length of the war cannot be 
predicted, CBO could give no total battle estimate. After hostilities 
end, the cost to return U.S. forces to their home bases would range 
between $5 billion and $7 billion, according to CBO. And the 
incremental cost of an occupation following combat operations varies 
from about $1 billion to $4 billion a month. This estimate does not 
include any cost of rebuilding or humanitarian assistance. That is a 
steep price to pay in dollars, but dollars are only a part of the 
equation.

There are many formulas to calculate cost in the form of dollars, but 
it is much more difficult to calculate cost in the form of deaths. 
Iraq may be a weaker nation militarily than it was during the Persian 
Gulf war, but its leader is no less determined and his weapons are no 
less lethal. During the Persian Gulf War, the United States was able 
to convince Saddam Hussein that the use of weapons of mass 
destruction would result in his being toppled from power. This time 
around, the object of an invasion of Iraq is to topple Saddam 
Hussein, so he has no reason to exercise restraint.

The questions surrounding the wisdom of declaring war on Iraq are 
many and serious. The answers are too few and too glib. This is no 
way to embark on war. The Senate must address these questions before 
acting on this kind of sweeping use of force resolution. We don't 
need more rhetoric. We don't need more campaign slogans or fund 
raising letters. We need - the American people need - information and 
informed debate.

Before we rush into war, we should focus on those things that pose 
the most direct threat to us - those facilities and weapons that form 
the body of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program. The United 
Nations is the proper forum to deal with the inspection of these 
facilities, and the destruction of any weapons discovered. If United 
Nations inspectors can enter the country, inspect those facilities 
and mark for destruction the ones that truly belong to a weapons 
program, then Iraq can be declawed without unnecessary risk or loss 
of life. That would be the best answer for Iraq, for the United 
States, and for the world. But if Iraq again chooses to interfere 
with such an ongoing and admittedly intrusive inspection regime, then 
and only then should the United States, with the support of the 
world, take stronger measures.

This is what Congress did in 1991, before the Persian Gulf War. The 
United States at that time gave the United Nations the lead in 
demanding that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait. The U.S. took the time to 
build a coalition of partners. When Iraq failed to heed the UN, then 
and only then did Congress authorize the use of force. That is the 
order in which the steps to war should be taken.

Everyone wants to protect our nation and our people. To do that in 
the most effective way possible, we should avail ourselves of every 
opportunity to minimize the number of troops we put at risk. Seeking 
once again to allow the United Nations inspection regime to 
peacefully seek and destroy the facilities and equipment employed in 
the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction program would be the least 
costly and most effective way of reducing the risk to our nation, 
provided that it is backed up by a credible threat of force if Iraq 
once again attempts to thwart the inspections. We can take a 
measured, stepped approach that would still leave open the 
possibility of a ground invasion if that should become necessary, but 
there is no need to take that step now.

I urge restraint. President Bush gave the United Nations the opening 
to deal effectively with the threat posed by Iraq. The UN embraced 
his exhortation and is working to develop a new, tougher inspection 
regime with firm deadlines and swift and sure accountability. Let us 
be convinced that a reinvigorated inspection regime cannot work 
before we move to any next step, and let us if we must employ force, 
employ the most precise and limited use of force necessary to get the 
job done.

Let us guard against the perils of haste, lest the Senate fall prey 
to the dangers of taking action that is both blind and improvident.

[END]

Robert C. Byrd represents West Virginia in the United States Senate.