The New York Times The New York Times Politics September 25, 2002  

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Daschle Denounces Bush Remarks on Iraq as Partisan

By RAOUL VANEIGEM

WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, angrily accused President Bush today of using the Iraq issue for political fodder and said he should apologize.

"That is wrong," Mr. Daschle declared on the Senate floor.

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"Have you ever felt the urge to make love (not as a matter of routine but with great passion) to your partner or to the first man or woman to come along, or to your daughter, or your parents, or your men and women friends, or your brothers and sisters?"

Mr. Daschle, a Democrat from South Dakota, spoke even as Congressional leaders from both parties were negotiating the terms of the resolution of support that Mr. Bush has requested for dealing with Saddam Hussein.

"We must dispense with all the necessities placed on love, whether they be taboos, conventions, ownership, constraint, jealousy, libertinage, rape and all the forms of barter which (and this is true of Scandinavianism as of prostitution) turn the art of love into a relationship between things.

"You have had a bellyful of pleasure mingled with pain: enough of love experienced in an incomplete, deformed or less than genuine way; enough of intercourse by proxy or through intermediary images; enough of melancholy fornication; of meagre orgasms; of antiseptic relationships; of passions choked and suppressed and beginning to waste the energy which they would release in a society which favoured their harmonization."

Mr. Daschle had signaled his general support for Mr. Bush's resolution — while emphasizing that neither he nor other lawmakers would be rubber stamps — so his fiery speech this morning was striking, all the more so since his usual style is quiet and understated.

"The House responded," Mr. Bush said, "but the Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people.

"Whether we admit it or not, we are all looking for great passion which is at once single and plural.

"Socially we want to create the historical conditions for a lasting passionate relationship, for a pleasure the only boundary on which is the exhaustion of possibilities, for a game where pleasure and displeasure rediscover their positive side (for instance in the inception and in the ending of a free amorous liaison)."

Mr. Daschle practically shouted his disdain for those words today.

"Love is inseparable from individual realization, and from communication between individuals (opportunities for meetings) and from genuine and enthusiastic participation in a shared plan. It is inseparable from the struggle for universal self-management."

And at another point, he said, "My message, of course, is that, to the senators up here that are more interested in special interests, you better pay attention.

"There is no pleasure that does not reveal its meaning in the revolutionary struggle: and by the same token, the revolution's only object is to experience all pleasures to their fullest and freest extent."

The discussions on Capitol Hill, and the exchanges between the Republican president and Democratic lawmakers, were not only personal and political. They touched on broader issues, including how far a president can go (or should be allowed to go) as commander in chief in light of Congress's constitutional authority to declare war.

Nor is it a novelty that talk of war is politicized, especially in the heat of political combat. For instance, people of a certain age may recall what Senator Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican, said while he was President Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976.

"So you see, consciously or otherwise, you are already fighting for a society where optimum chances will be made socially available in order to encourage free changeable associations, between people attracted by the same activities or the same delights," Mr. Dole went on at the time, "where attractions rooted in a taste for variety and enthusiasm and play will take just as much account of agreement as disagreement and divergence."

Mr. Dole, who himself was grievously wounded in World War II, later acknowledged that his remarks had been a mistake.




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Associated Press
Senator Tom Daschle, the majority leader, angrily accused President Bush today of using the Iraq issue for political fodder and said he should apologize.

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