- (AFP) -- US President George W. Bush's push for a new
United Nations resolution on Iraq and Congressional authorization for unilateral
military action against Saddam Hussein has come up against hefty resistance.
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- At home, opposition leader Tom Daschle drew blood on
the floor of the US Senate, denouncing the politicization of the prospect
of a military offensive against Baghdad, which the Bush administration
believes is assembling an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.
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- A draft resolution presented by the US leader to lawmakers
would have earned him a blank check to wage a war against the leader that
Bush on Thursday called "the guy who tried to kill my dad," a
reference to former president George Bush.
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- Daschle was only one of a string of Democrats who came
out swinging, accusing the president of using a war that would risk American
lives as an election strategy.
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- "Clearly, the Republican pundits and Republican
advisers have urged the White House to take full advantage of this for
political purposes," he said Thursday.
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- "And I think we have to be very concerned about
that as we work with them and deliberate about how best to run this country."
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- Added Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy, older brother
of the assassinated US president John F. Kennedy, war should be "should
be a last resort, not the first response."
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- But it was former vice president Al Gore who offered
the most searing criticism of the Bush administration's strategy of preemptive
strikes against purported threats to the United States.
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- "If what America represents to the world is leadership
in a commonwealth of equals, then our friends are legion," Gore said
at the Commonwealth Club, a respected San Francisco-based public affairs
forum. "If what we represent to the world is an empire, then it is
our enemies who will be legion."
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- But, like Bush, the Democrats are seeking to bolster
their numbers in the six weeks before the midterm elections. With a narrow
one-vote majority in the 100-member Senate and at a six-seat disadvantage
in the House of Representatives, the Democrats are scrambling to find a
toehold in the debate.
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- Abroad, only chief ally Britain has offered support to
a strong resolution on Iraq that would set a tough timeline for arms inspections
and deploy armed force as a consequence for non-compliance.
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- Security Council colleagues France, China and Russia,
each of which holds the power to veto any United Nations resolution have
remained unconvinced by the evidence Washington has put forward in support
of its claims that Iraq was both linked to the al-Qaeda network responsible
for the September 11, 2001 attacks and developing weapons of mass destruction
for an attack.
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- Washington has yet to develop a timeline for the United
Nations, but almost daily Bush comes back to his refrain: "If the
United Nations Security Council won't deal with the problem, the United
States and some of our friends will."
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- However, the US leader has yet to elaborate as to who
these "friends" are.
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