Bush Has Power To Punish Iraq

Saddam Hussein's unanimous "landslide" notwithstanding, the Bush administration continues rattling the saber against Iraq.

At a ceremony Wednesday in the East Room of the White House, reports CBS News Correspondent Mark Knoller, the president signed the joint resolution enacted by Congress last week authorizing the use of force against Iraq. The measure declares it is up to Mr. Bush to decide when military action "is necessary and appropriate." The ceremony is designed to emphasize that support for the resolution was bipartisan.

The authorization passed by a better than 3-to-1 margin in the Senate, and 2-to-1 in the House.

Without a dimpled or pregnant chad in sight, officials announced that Saddam Hussein took 100 percent of the vote, to keep him in power for another seven years, reports CBS News Reporter Charles D'Agata in Baghdad. Not one Iraqi voted against him, nor even abstained from voting, according to government results.

While the unanimous vote might be seen as absurd, government officials say it should challenge anyone considering a "regime change" in Iraq.

All 11,445,638 of the eligible voters cast ballots, said Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council that is Iraq's key decision-making body.

"This is a unique manifestation of democracy which is superior to all other forms of democracies even in these countries which are besieging Iraq and trying to suffocate it," Ibrahim said at a news conference in Baghdad, apparently referring to the United States.

When it was suggested that some might see the results as a farce, vice president Ibrahim replied, "They don't know the Iraqi way."

The White House dismissed the one-man race in advance.

"Obviously, it's not a very serious day, not a very serious vote and nobody places any credibility on it," press secretary Ari Fleischer said in Washington on Tuesday as ballots were being cast in Iraq.

Meanwhile, the bombing in Bali seems to have swung British public opinion in favor of a strike against Iraq, reports CBS News Correspondent Steve Holt.

Britain has been one of President Bush's staunchest supporters on the possible use of force against Iraq.

The latest poll has 42 percent of the British public supporting military action. That's a 10-point leap from a week ago, and it's seen as a direct response to the Bali bombing. Britain suffered the second greatest number of casualties in the blast, with as many as 30 British tourists feared dead.

At the same time, opposition to hitting Iraq has dropped to 37 percent, the lowest level yet. Despite prime minister Tony Blair's strong backing for Washington's Iraq policy, many politicians, and much of the public have been reluctant to endorse it.

As the United States works to sway key members of the United Nations Security Council to its cause, Russian president Vladimir Putin said his country is prepared to work with other permanent members of the U.N. Security Council to develop new resolutions ensuring the effectiveness of international weapons inspectors in Iraq, Russian news agencies reported Wednesday.

Putin's statement, made after a meeting with Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, came in the wake of a statement by Deputy Prime Minister Yuri Fedotov that the United States' proposed resolution on Iraq is unacceptable to Russia, but the country remains willing to consider other proposals.

The United States and Britain have been pushing for a new resolution in the Security Council that would set stringent terms for Iraq's cooperation with U.N. weapons inspectors, including the use of military force if Iraq does not fulfill the new terms.

Russia has called for the return of weapons inspectors to Iraq as soon as possible, without waiting for new resolutions.

However, an advance team of U.N. weapons inspectors will not head to Iraq until after the Security Council decides on a resolution that may contain new instructions, the chief weapons inspector says.

Baghdad hoped the advance team would arrive Saturday, but chief inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday the team will wait for the conclusion of a Security Council vote on competing resolutions concerning the intended inspections for weapons of mass destruction.

To get a vote total at all - let alone a 100 percent "yes" vote - Iraqi officials would have had to gather and count millions of paper ballots, some from remote areas far from Baghdad.

CBS News Correspondent Tom Fenton reports voters going to the polls in Baghdad faced a simple choice - to vote "yes" or "no" - and everyone seemed to be voting "yes."

Whether that's because they love their leader - as many people said they did - or for other reasons, was hard to tell.

A United Nations human rights report says 500 people were jailed in the last referendum after they voted "no."

Some voters went to extremes to make it clear where they stood.

"I love Saddam more than myself," one man told CBS News, as he wrote "yes" on his ballot in blood - his own blood.

Another Iraqi voiced concern about the possibility that the U.S. might launch a military attack on Iraq. "Would Bush allow these beautiful children to be killed?" he said, pointing to his four children, standing nearby.

"All Iraq elected President Saddam Hussein," exclaimed another Baghdad man. "It was like a wedding day for all the Iraqis. All the nation said 'Yes, yes!' to President Saddam Hussein, and this was thrown in the eyes of the Americans."