Daschle Loses It

MUCH OF THE WORLD focused last week on Saddam Hussein's continuing failure to comply with U.N. demands for disarmament, and on President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle had a different agenda. He spent the week undermining the president by questioning his honesty.

Last Monday, chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix addressed the Security Council. He detailed the many examples of Iraq's refusal to comply with U.N. Resolution 1441. The same day, Daschle spoke to a roomful of journalists at the National Press Club. He delivered a stinging indictment of the Bush administration, charging, among many other things, that President Bush has been misleading the American people. The result, he said, is a "credibility gap" between the wartime leader and those he is responsible for protecting.

Daschle is primarily concerned that President Bush has not proven that Saddam Hussein presents, in Daschle's words, "a very imminent threat." That's a high bar. It seems less a realistic request of the Bush administration than a deliberately unattainable standard of evidence. For, as Daschle surely knows, if President Bush had proof that the Iraqi threat were imminent, to say nothing of "very imminent," the president wouldn't waste time publishing the evidence. He would eliminate the threat.

Daschle's posturing makes the top Senate Democrat look less like a concerned statesman than a determined political opponent. And already, polls show a chasm between Republicans and Democrats on national security issues. A survey released last week by James Carville's Democracy Corps found that respondents trust Republicans over Democrats to keep Americans safe by 47 percent to 16 percent. Some of Daschle's fellow Democrats are nervous.

"I like Tom and he's in a tough position here," says fellow Democrat Evan Bayh, senator from Indiana. "The base of the Democratic party is in profound disagreement with the rest of the country on this issue. And I guess for Tom not to recognize that would be political suicide."

Still, Bayh rejects Daschle's argument. "I don't understand those who want to wait until the threat is imminent," Bayh says. "Do we wait until the missiles are launched, until the smallpox is in the country? The consequences of error could be catastrophic."

If hawkish Democrats are worried by Daschle's approach to policy, they are likely to be dismayed by his more personal attacks. As Washington Post congressional reporter Jim VandeHei wrote Thursday, "In recent days, Daschle has accused the president of essentially lying to the American people."

In an appearance on CBS's "Face the Nation" on January 26, Daschle was asked eight questions about Iraq. Three times he stated that the "burden of proof" is on the Bush administration. This despite 12 years of Iraqi noncompliance and 17 U.N. resolutions requiring Saddam to prove that he has disarmed.

Daschle was more specific in his talk at the press club. "If we have proof of nuclear and biological weapons, why don't we show that proof to the world, as President Kennedy did 40 years ago when he sent Adlai Stevenson to the United Nations to show the world U.S. photographs of offensive missiles in Cuba?" And in a floor speech two days later, Daschle discussed the Iraqi threat not in terms of the weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein has, but of those he "could acquire."

Yet Daschle's own record on the matter of using force in Iraq reveals him to be a hypocrite. And the tortured logic he employs to question the main premise of the Bush administration's Iraq policy--that Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction--exposes him as a political opportunist.

First, the history. Five years ago, on February 17, 1998, with troops massing in the Persian Gulf, President Clinton went to the Pentagon to prepare the nation for the likelihood of war. Clinton's speech was important enough to warrant a "CBS News Special Report." Dan Rather, not the soaps, greeted viewers who tuned in on their lunch hour. "War is a very strong word, but something akin to war is definitely planned," reported Rather. "Our men and women are in position, if given the command to strike by the president of the United States, and the president is going to talk about his reasons for considering putting those men and women in even greater danger."

Clinton gave a strong speech. "Just consider some of the facts," he said.