Editorial: A rush-to-judgment lesson

Sunday, June 18, 2006 | 7:40 a.m.

A reading of the Iraq War Resolution today, three years and eight months after it was overwhelmingly passed by both houses of Congress, amounts to a strong lesson about the perils of blind trust.

It is a trust that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, who voted for the resolution, remembers well and vows not to repeat as tension simmers between Iran and the Bush administration.

The tension springs from Iran's ongoing efforts to build a nuclear facility. Iran says it is for producing electric power only. The United States, as well as the United Nations, however, fears Iran has its sights set on developing nuclear weapons.

Reid's legislation would subject President Bush's developing Iran policy to strict congressional oversight. It would require the president and his top policymakers to report to Congress on the methods they are using to verify all findings bearing on the policy.

"Everything they say will have to be supported by facts," Reid said last week, referring to the legislation that he is attaching to a defense bill. "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 Iraq War Resolution said Iraq "poses a continuing threat to the national security of the United States ... by ... continuing to possess and develop a significant chemical and biological weapons capability, actively seeking a nuclear weapons capability, ..."

Now that it is known that Iraq was not seeking nuclear weapons and possessed no chemical or biological weapons - Bush's fundamental allegations that led to the war - it is sobering to think of what has happened. It is also sobering to think of what alternatives might have been chosen for dealing with Iraq had Congress and the American people not been misled.

Reid's legislation will almost certainly be killed by the current Republican-controlled Senate. Nevertheless, Bush would better serve the nation if he treated Congress as an equal branch of government, one that is owed the opportunity to fully question and fact-check his reasons for adopting any major policy. It is a shame that Reid, because Bush has been so contemptuous of Congress, would even have to contemplate such legislation.