Top Congressional leaders in Washington are applauding a move by President Bush to authorize the CIA to conduct covert operations to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein and urging further action if such efforts fail, Reuters reported yesterday. Its report followed the disclosure by the Washington Post of the covert program, said to include the authorization to use lethal force to capture the Iraqi tyrant. The minority leader in the House, Richard Gephardt, was quoted by Reuters as saying leaders on Capitol Hill had been briefed on the secret directive by the White House and said he hoped such efforts were successful. “It is an appropriate action to take,” Mr. Gephardt said on ABC’s “This Week” program. In a recent and closely watched speech, the Democrat had given support to the idea of using force against Iraq. The Republican leader in the House, Richard Armey, was quoted by Reuters as saying, “It’s a wise and prudent thing to do.” Senators McCain and Daschle were also quoted by the wire as offering varying degrees of support. Senator Biden, who chairs the Foreign Relations committee, went to far as to tell CBS’s “Face the Nation” that if covert action doesn’t work, “we better be prepared to move forward with another action, an overt action.”

The first thing that needs to be said about this is hallelujah. According to the report in the Washington Post, the CIA has been directed to use all available means to topple Saddam’s regime. This includes increased support to Iraqi opposition groups and forces inside and outside Iraq. It is said to include money, weapons, equipment training and intelligence information, as summarized in Reuters’ report. But mark that it has been nearly four years since the Congress, by an overwhelming vote in both houses, authorized its first big money for the democratic government in exile, the Iraqi National Congress. After signing that measure, President Clinton refused to make meaningful payments to the INC, while the Central Intelligence Agency went around badmouthing its president, Ahmad Chalabi, a University of Chicago educated mathematician. Mr. Chalabi and his colleagues in the INC were also ridiculed by Thomas Friedman of the New York Times and by various policy experts writing in Foreign Affairs magazine. In fact, Mr. Chalabi and the INC stand at the head of the movement that seeks to restore the one revolutionary idea to the Iraq front, the idea of a free Arab democracy that would maintain warm relations with the Western democracies.

What needs to be said right now is that the test of any program against Iraq will, in the end, be the war aims. Only a popular, democratic revolution in Iraq will bring about a regime friendly to America. If a CIA-backed coup succeeds in installing a Baathist general as the post-Saddam head-of-Iraqfor-life, America will have to reckon with the consequences of a yet another corrupt, dictatorial, anti-Israel regime that is backed by America. Similar regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt spawned Al Qaeda terrorists that attacked us. This is not an argument for American inaction against Saddam, who is a genuine threat, but an argument for some rapid and well-considered political planning for what comes after Saddam, and for the involvement of the Iraqi people — not Saddam’s cronies — in the revolution against him. That means dealing with the Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmad Chalabi. If Mr. Bush fails to learn from the errors of America’s Middle East policy under Mr. Clinton, in a decade another president will be trying to oust another dangerous Iraqi leader. And our expanded department of homeland security will be tested more than ever as it seeks to protect America from the damage.