Congressional leaders say Iraq resolution will pass soon

WASHINGTON -- Congressional leaders said Sunday a resolution authorizing war against Iraq, expected to pass with little dissent, will strengthen the United States' hand at the United Nations and increase pressure on Saddam Hussein to disarm.

President Bush, after a weekend in Maine, returned to the White House and prepared to address the nation Monday night from Cincinnati. He was making the case against the Iraqi president on the one-year anniversary of the start of bombing in Afghanistan.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who has counseled caution in unilateral moves against Saddam, said he will vote for the resolution but only after trying to make it more to his liking.

A leading moderate Democrat suggested Bush was winning broad Democratic support for reasons of domestic politics as well as concerns about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Many Democrats opposed similar legislation that authorized the Persian Gulf War waged by Bush's father in 1991, and the party is still smarting from a perception as anti-war.

"I think we need to work to improve our image on that score by taking a more aggressive posture with regard to Iraq, empowering the president," Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana, a leader of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, told "Fox News Sunday."

Bush requested a strong resolution that would have given him a virtual free hand to deal with Iraq's chemical and biological weapons arsenals and its nuclear arms research program by removing Saddam.

Bipartisan endorsement

Last week, a bipartisan group of lawmakers went to the White House and endorsed a somewhat narrower version. It would give Bush broad authority to use force to enforce relevant U.N. resolutions, with or without the cooperation of the United Nations.

Daschle suggested would be more likely to win the approval he has requested from the U.N. Security Council if the case for moving against Saddam were to rest on a congressional resolution.

"I think he will be," Daschle told NBC's "Meet the Press." "At the end of the day, I think the U.N. is going to be with us."

A House vote is expected Wednesday or Thursday, according to Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. Daschle said Senate passage should come by next week. Congress is getting ready to break for midterm elections.

Bush warned in his radio address Saturday that "delay, indecision and inaction ... could lead to massive and sudden horror" for the United States. Aides said Sunday his Cincinnati speech will answer lingering questions about why disarming Iraq is necessary, even by force if required.

The speech is meant to deliver in one cohesive 20-minute package Bush's arguments for confronting Saddam without delay, White House officials said. Bush probably will discuss his ideas for a postwar, post-Saddam Iraq.

"He will frame the debate in a new and different way than he has in the past," said White House communications director Dan Bartlett. Other officials would not rule out that Bush would discuss new facts or intelligence about the threat posed by Iraq, but they said that was not the purpose of the address.

"I'd like to hear him put Iraq in the context of all of the challenges and commitments" facing the United States today, including the war in Afghanistan, and "how are we going to sequence all of these," said Sen. Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Graham, D-Fla., also said on CNN's "Late Edition" on the consequences of difference actions against Iraq.

"If we don't handle this carefully, including doing our domestic law enforcement as well as our foreign policy, that we could face a significant increase in incidents of terrorism inside the United States," he said.