ASKING ABOUT IRAQ

The United States regularly urges diplomatic solutions to difficult international issues no matter how many decades of talks may be required – witness the Koreas, Northern Ireland, Israel. But no one expects the Bush administration to negotiate with Saddam Hussein. This is partly because the Iraqi leader has acted brutally and horrifyingly against, for instance, the Kurds, but also because of what the Bush administration wants. Better behavior of the Saddam Hussein regime is not enough; it wants there to be no regime at all.

So it’s war, and, as explained in a recent New York Times story about a leaked Pentagon planning document, war on a large scale. Attacks by air, land and sea would involve hundreds of thousands of troops, hundreds of planes attacking thousands of targets, special forces striking at Saddam’s laboratories and the Iraqi president, presumably, arrested, shot or both – unless on the off chance he employs the same sort of backdoor exit used by Osama bin Laden.

To date, Congress has not had much to say about this. Failure to back the president in a time of war is bad policy and bad politics, the feeling goes. But as of last week, fortunately, at least one member of Congress is speaking up. Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, announced his intent for September hearings on the administration’s Iraq plans. He said he wants to know primarily who the administration sees as replacing Mr. Hussein should the operation prove successful.

That’s a good start, but Congress should also be interested in why the Kurds, who have the greatest interest in seeing the Iraqi dictator tossed out, are discouraging the U.S. intervention. It should explore one of the reasons for the document leak – an anonymous source said the plan envisioned a strategy that was at least a decade old. Does the plan call for fighting the previous war? And the committee should spend a lot of time on why Iraq is the next legitimate target for the fight against terror.

There are, of course, an interminable number of questions that could be asked about such a military operation, but a long list is not needed. Why Iraq? Why soon? What’s next? These would give Congress and the public at least a general idea of the direction the administration intends to take this country. Whether the country wants to be taken there will depend in part on the answers delivered to the Senate panel.