We need to hear from Democrats on Iraq

WASHINGTON -- The Democratic presidential aspirants have been pussyfooting around the Iraq question, wanting to have it both ways on whether to support President Bush's rush-to-war.

The time has come for them to show some backbone. They should declare their position clearly and point to peaceful options that the president has no time for. Speaking of clarity, I salute Bush for his laser-focused campaign against Saddam Hussein, even if he ignores facts and history. Also getting strong marks for clarity would be Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., who is just as hawkish as Bush.

It's disappointing that the Democrats don't have a leading candidate to challenge that point of view with the force of moral clarity. Most of the leading candidates are straddling the fence, reluctant to take a firm stand one way or another. These wafflers should get C-minus grades when voters are passing out grades for leadership.

At a time when the Democrats need giants to challenge the incumbent president, they are surrounded by "me too" candidates.

If it gets down to Lieberman, Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, John Kerry of Massachusetts or Joseph Biden of Delaware, the voters will have scant choice in '04 and may feel they have to stick with the known quantity.

Democrats have always felt slightly queasy when dealing with issues of national security. Polls invariably show that voters trust Republicans more than Democrats when it comes to war and peace. The same voters trust Democrats more when it comes to education, health care and Social Security.

Maybe that explains why most of the growing list of Democratic contenders are so nervous when it comes to challenging the president on Iraq. They also have to be acutely aware of the fact that the American people will rally behind the commander in chief in time of military crisis, as shown in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm and its aftermath.

Against this wishy-washy backdrop, Vermont Gov. Howard Dean stands out because of his anti-war message.

In a foreign policy address earlier this week at Drake University in Des Moines, Dean said Bush is too focused on "the wrong war at the wrong time."

He suggested that the "right war" would be to target al-Qaida, which caused the devastating 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States. U.S. officials are convinced the malevolent al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden is still alive after his last tape rallying radical Muslims to more violence.

"What happened to the war against al-Qaida?" Dean asked in his Iowa speech.

Dean also said he believed Bush should be spending money for the defense of our country by hiring more emergency workers and suggesting more security measures.

At the same time, Dean said he would be prepared to go ahead against Baghdad if the U.N. Security Council approved and if it were "clear the threat posed to us by Saddam Hussein was imminent and could neither be contained nor deterred."

Bush hasn't made the case for war, noted Dean, who endorsed more of "the hard work of diplomacy and inspection" as alternatives to the Bush war machine.

Dean said he would have voted against the congressional resolution giving the president open-ended power to go to war on his own terms and timing.

While attacking Bush, Dean also heaped scorn on his Democratic rivals who are members of Congress.

"I do not believe the president should have been given a green light to drive the nation into conflict without the case having first been made to Congress and to the American people for why war is necessary," Dean said.

"That the president was given open-ended authority to go to war in Iraq resulted from a failure of too many in my party in Washington who postured for position instead of standing on principle," Dean added.

He chided the congressional presidential aspirants for voting for the war resolution and then running around to voter groups and criticizing the administration's war campaign.

Other anti-war Democrats -- Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich of Ohio and Al Sharpton of New York -- also are on the growing list of presidential hopefuls.

Dean has burst on the scene in a way reminiscent of Jimmy Carter of Plains, Ga., the former governor of Georgia, who in 1976 was a virtual unknown outside the South. But he patiently put together a winning campaign to defeat the incumbent president, Gerald Ford. He stunned all the Beltway seers.

Dean isn't making any brief for Saddam, calling him "a vicious dictator and a documented deceiver."

Kucinich, 56, notes that Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's book, "Bush At War," depicts the administration as so eager to attack Iraq that on Sept. 12, 2001, when the nation was in a state of shock after the terrorist attacks the day before, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was already urging war against Iraq.

"Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaida," Rumsfeld is quoted as saying. He was echoing his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, who has had Iraq on his target list since 1991 when he unsuccessfully tried to sell it to the first President Bush.

Rumsfeld was "raising the possibility that they could take advantage of the opportunity offered by the terrorist attacks to go after Saddam immediately," Woodward wrote.

There was no evidence then of any link between Iraq and al-Qaida. And try as they might, and despite lots of huffing and puffing, Bush administration officials haven't produced any evidence since.

For reasons that I and many other people don't understand, Bush has been angling to attack Iraq for years. His Democratic challengers should demand to know why.

Add P-I Opinion headlines to