House Majority Leader Richard Gephardt said today he opposes the use of military force in the near future to oust Iraq from Kuwait, urging President Bush to follow a policy of ``patient strength.'' ``Stay the course. Stick with the sanctions. Do not try to mount an offensive military action in the near future,'' the Missouri Democrat said in a speech. Gephardt's opposition to any congressional resolution authorizing use of force is the first public break among the Democratic leadership, who said last week that Bush would have a better chance of winning congressional approval for the use of force in the Persian Gulf if the United Nations first backed such a move. His remarks came as the Senate Armed Services Committee began its second day of hearings on the prospects of U.S. military action against Iraq. Democrats on Tuesday demanded that Bush give Congress the same opportunity as the United Nations to debate a resolution authorizing military force. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told the panel today he did not believe the United States could sustain nearly 430,000 troops in the gulf for an extended period of time. ``The issue in Arabia is not American staying power but the host country's domestic stability. Conditions in the gulf are not even remotely comparable to Europe or Northeast Asia,'' Kissinger said. The former Nixon administration official contended that the sanctions and the possible use of military force are not successive phases of the same policy. ``They will prove mutually exclusive because by the time it is evident that sanctions alone cannot succeed, a credible military option will probably no longer exist,'' Kissinger said. Gephardt, in a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, ``Before we resort to offensive military action, Congress and the American people will need to be convinced that the policy of pressure, isolation and sanctions has failed. President Bush has yet to make such an argument,'' ``The policy of patient strength is, I think, our best hope,'' Gephardt said. Gephardt made his comments while two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff bolstered the Democratic challenge to Bush to give United Nations sanctions time to work. ``My main concern with this latest scheduled reinforcement isn't that we might choose to fight, but rather that the deployment might cause us to fight - perhaps prematurely and perhaps unnecessarily,'' David C. Jones told the Armed Services Committee. Both Jones and retired Adm. William Crowe said the sanctions are the best option at this time and expressed concern about the long-term effect of military action in the Middle East. ``I counsel patience. War is not neat, it's not tidy. It's a mess,'' Crowe said at the hearing. President Bush's press secretary, Marlin Fitzwater, declined to respond directly to the statements by Gephardt and the former chairmen of the joint chiefs. ``Obviously there are going to be different opinions,'' Fitzwater told reporters. Fitzwater said Bush does not plan to ask Congress for authority to launch hostilities under the War Powers Act. The president maintains he has the authority to take such action with or without congressional approval. In later testimony today, Crowe said he saw no ``significant breaks'' in the international sanctions and urged the administration and Congress to give them a year to 18 months to take effect. ``The issue is not whether an embargo will work, but whether we have the patience to let it take effect,'' Crowe said. The retired admiral said he believed the American people, who waited out 40 years of the Cold War, have the patience for the sanctions. ``It would be a sad commentary if Saddam Hussein, a two-bit tyrant who sits on 17 million people and possesses a gross national product of $40 billion, proved to be more patient than the United States, the world's most affluent and powerful nation,'' Crowe said. Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., the president pro tem of the Senate, agreed that the American people have the patience. ``When we view grandmothers and grandfathers who lost not one but two, three grandchildren and they feel we took the action too hastily, I think we'll all have the time to be sorry,'' Byrd said. ``The American people are willing to sacrifice,'' he added. On Tuesday, committee chairman Sam Nunn, D-Ga., told the hearing that an expected U.N. resolution authorizing the use of military force to eject Iraq from Kuwait ``is not a substitute for fully informing the American people of our own nation's objectives and strategy.'' Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., the No. 2 Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters he believed Bush should send an emissary to Baghdad to make sure Saddam isn't ``confused'' about the U.S. position. While agreeing that no talk of compromise can be made until Iraq withdraws from Kuwait, Hamilton said ``a strong argument can be made to talk to him directly or indirectly. I don't see we have a lot to lose.''
