WHO IS TOM DASCHLE?:

Mad Daschle (Bob Jones, 10/12/02, World)

According to an unsigned office memo, Mr. Daschle was the senator's point man on "Space, Defense (including Veterans), Foreign Affairs (including Middle East), [and] South Dakota Projects." Another unsigned memo gave him "primary responsibility for Middle East and all other foreign relations matters."

In any other Senate office, responsibility over Middle Eastern affairs would hardly have been considered a plum assignment. But Sen. Abourezk's parents were Lebanese, and he considered the Arab-Israeli conflict his top priority. Though he campaigned largely on farm issues back in South Dakota, he quickly established a reputation in Washington as the go-to guy for any group with an ax to grind against Israel--so much so that one radio commentator dubbed him "the Senator from Saudi Dakota." Sometimes his battles were petty, like his attempt to pressure the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of the United Jewish Appeal (a charitable organization similar to the United Way), or his vote against confirming Henry Kissinger as America's first Jewish Secretary of State.

But other battles challenged the most basic assumptions of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Mr. Abourezk called the Israeli government "terrorist" and consistently opposed arms sales to Tel Aviv. He called for recognition of the PLO and embraced Syrian President Hafez Assad, a major sponsor of international terrorism. (Later, during the Gulf War, the former senator even compared Israel to Nazi Germany: "Israel has been grabbing land since 1948, and I don't know how you call it self-defense.... Hitler said he took Czechoslovakia in self-defense, you know.")

Almost every week, Mr. Abourezk was on the Senate floor, reading lengthy statements for the Congressional Record that deplored Israel. As the staffer in charge of Middle East issues, Mr. Daschle must at least have reviewed these statements, just as he reviewed every piece of correspondence dealing with foreign affairs.

Or was his involvement deeper? Mr. Abourezk's papers, now stored in more than 1,000 boxes at the University of South Dakota, contain hundreds of pages of statements from the Congressional Record, but usually only in printed form. What few drafts have survived are mostly typewritten and unsigned, making it impossible to determine the author.

But there are tantalizing exceptions that suggest Mr. Daschle was more than just a rubber stamp for the senator's views.

It was interesting that when he had his temper tantrum about the President politicizing the war, correspondents said that his anger must have been real not feigned because they'd never seen him that mad before. Of course the same reasoning could support the idea that he was merely playacting, like the prosecutor at a show trial. Posted by Orrin Judd at October 7, 2002 7:23 PM