Reid seeks to rein in Bush

J. Patrick Coolican and Lisa Mascaro

Thursday, June 15, 2006 | 7:17 a.m.

During the fall of 2002, the Bush administration spoke darkly of Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons - and weeks before the November election, President Bush asked Congress for authorization to go to war with Iraq.

Nevada Sen. Harry Reid and 28 other Democrats voted for the resolution, which divided their party. The Democrats were beaten badly in the election, and the war began a few months later.

There will be no repeat with Iran, Reid said this week. He is putting forth legislation that would impose strict oversight on Bush's Iran policy, even forcing the administration to report to Congress on its process for vetting the accuracy of all statements of the president, vice president and others in the administration.

The legislation has virtually no chance of passing, and even if it did, the administration would fight it as an intrusion into its realm. As a political move, however, it offers a clear picture of an aggressive Democratic strategy five months before the election.

Reid's proposed legislation, which he is attaching as an amendment to the defense authorization bill the Senate is debating this week, would also compel the president to report to Congress what he knows about Iran's nuclear program and to reveal what he intends to do about it.

"Everything they say will have to be supported by facts," Reid said in a statement. "I have no doubt the White House won't like this requirement, but after what happened in Iraq, the American people deserve nothing less."

The bill is just one of a series of recent moves, including a call for a troop drawdown in Iraq. Together, those steps indicate Reid feels emboldened by recent polling, which shows his party has drawn even with Republicans on national security for the first time in years.

The move also foreshadows what the government will look like if the Democrats recapture a majority of one or both houses of Congress. Reid and his counterpart in the House, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., would push for aggressive congressional oversight of the administration, setting up constitutional conflicts over power and prerogative.

But the Democratic strategy carries substantial risk, political analysts said. Republicans can try to fire up their base of hard-core supporters by warning that Democrats will try to thwart the administration's initiatives and call hearings to review its conduct of the last six years.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA Middle East specialist and currently a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank, called Reid's proposal an attempt to tie the administration's hands.

Reid is "trying to show and demonstrate, I suspect, that you don't have perfect intelligence," Gerecht said.

In reality, Gerecht said, intelligence can give a vivid snapshot in time, but rarely provides lawmakers the definitive information they seek. He said he suspects Reid is using a lack of definitive information to avoid a confrontation with Iran.

Some former intelligence officers, political scientists and constitutional lawyers of both parties support more vigorous congressional oversight of the administration. They say the Republican Congress has failed to lead and represent the American people on important issues, including the use or misuse of intelligence before the war in Iraq, the planning and execution of the war and the treatment of prisoners both in Iraq and in the wider war on terrorism.

"We recognize the importance of oversight," John Moseman, former director of congressional affairs at the CIA, said at a forum Tuesday at the liberal Center for American Progress. "It brings some discipline to the system by making sure bad ideas don't get acted on," said Moseman, who also worked for Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Richard Stoll, a political scientist at Rice University, called Reid's bill a "shot across the bow" of the administration and a way of reminding Bush that Congress has powers and responsibilities in foreign policy. The Constitution gives Congress the ability to declare war and control the Pentagon's purse strings.

"The senator is trying to sort of bring things back to what he sees as their proper balance," he said.

But other scholars believe that any attempt to vet administration statements could amount to an illegal obstruction of the president's ability to create foreign policy.

Professor Douglas Kmiec of Pepperdine University, former director of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel under President Ronald Reagan, said the president's lawyers would probably object by saying the law would intrude improperly on the secret, internal deliberations of the president's staff.

Politically, Reid's aggressiveness on foreign policy is a mixed bag, analysts said.

"The oversight, the preview of what things would look like under a Democratic majority, that has pluses and minuses," said Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. Now that Democrats have made up ground on national security, they can take their shot on Iran, which is a largely undefined issue, she said.

"It shows Democrats being activist on the national security issue," she said.

A call for more aggressive oversight could fire up the Democratic base, Duffy said. But it also could backfire. "Republicans have been talking to their base with the message of fear. What happens if Democrats take majorities this feeds into that."

Peter Beinart, who just published a book on liberals and foreign policy called "The Good Fight," said more muscular congressional oversight could have broad appeal if the public believes it will lead to better policy.

Scott Rasmussen, whose poll earlier this year revealed Democratic parity on national security, said the danger for Democrats is getting boxed into a perception that they're more concerned with "legal niceties," while Bush and Republicans are more focused on "catching bad guys," he said.

Rasmussen also said that for the first time since 9/11, national security may be less important than other issues, such as gasoline prices and illegal immigration.