Bosom Buddies

On a recent Tuesday morning,the NPR broadcast is filled with Iraq news. The women of Fallujah have left town for their own safety, and a bomb has hit a Baghdad restaurant.

But inside the Franklin County Visitor's Center, about 50 miles southwest of Kansas City, the war seems a distant concern. The newish building, decorated with blown-up vintage postcards and a real pumpkin from Peckham's Pumpkin Patch, is the first of this morning's stops for U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback. There will be 49 more Kansas destinations for Brownback in the 3 weeks between the end of the congressional session and Election Day.

That sounds like a grueling campaign schedule, but it really isn't. In Brownback's run for re-election, there is no real campaign to speak of. Brownback's Democratic opponent, little-known Lee Jones of Lenexa, was actually defeated in the primary by even littler known Robert Conroy of Shawnee, who then withdrew from the race, giving the nomination to Jones by default.

Brownback's tour is more like a series of coffees with the pastor, 45-minute visits during which he lays out his three priorities -- jobs, security and values -- and takes a few questions before hitting the road again. The senator is introduced by Bruce Osladil, Franklin County chairman for Brownback's campaign. Osladil pushes the refreshments (doughnuts and a meat-and-cheese tray) and apologizes that the 7:45 a.m. event conflicted with a board meeting of the chamber of commerce. The forty or so people in attendance do their best to fill the space, despite the missing members of the chamber's board.

Brownback looks relaxed in his purple-and-teal Kansas State University jacket, which he wears despite his alma mater's shocking football loss to the University of Kansas the previous weekend.

He begins by appealing to the farmers in the room, mentioning that his own father's farm not too many miles to the south is enjoying a bumper corn crop. Then he recites his trinitarian message.

"We've gotta keep the economy growing.

"We can't let the terrorists rest or have sanctuary anywhere in the world.

"I never thought running for office, I'd be debating what marriage is."

Then Brownback fields questions about stem-cell research, taxes, health care and energy. No one brings up Iraq.

Don Waymire, a Franklin County commissioner in attendance, says he isn't surprised. "Hindsight is 20-20," Waymire says as Brownback is ushered out the door to a waiting car, bound for another stop in Garnett. "When you look forward, you have to do what you think is best based on the information you have. I think that was accepted by the majority of people here."

Although the country's top Republican, President George W. Bush, has endured a withering examination of his decision to launch a pre-emptive war in Iraq, it's hard to find anyone in Kansas' small towns or in Washington, D.C., who will speak critically about Brownback's role in that decision.

"They aren't into navel-gazing when it comes to Iraq," says a staffer for a Midwest senator about the lack of second-guessing in the nation's capital.

But some can't forget that fellow who, before Bush launched the first missiles on Baghdad, seemed to be a constant companion of the hawkish senator from Kansas.

"When the definitive history of the current Iraq war is finally written," John Dizard pointed out in a May 4 Salon piece, "wealthy exile Ahmad Chalabi will be among those judged most responsible for the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein."

Although Kansans tend not to bring it up, it was Brownback who provided Chalabi much of his access to Washington.

Brownback repeatedly had the Iraqi exile testify before his subcommittee of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. And Brownback continually pressured President Bill Clinton and President Bush to give money to Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. "Chalabi played Washington like it was an orchestra, and Sam Brownback was one of the violins," says Erik Gustafson, Army veteran of the first Gulf War and executive director of the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). The nonprofit group, founded in 1998 to work for human rights and democracy in Iraq, questioned the rush to war.

"It was clear Sen. Brownback was one of the prime senatorial offices that Ahmad Chalabi and those that supported Chalabi relied on," Gustafson says.

Brownback's staff members have not returned repeated phone calls seeking comment for this story. But approached after an appearance at a Garnett, Kansas, restaurant, Brownback assigns Chalabi to the same category as the entire war, which turned out to be a snipe hunt for nonexistent stockpiles of chemical and nuclear weapons.

"You look at it now. It's like looking at Iraq and saying, 'Well, where are the weapons of mass destruction?'" Brownback explains. "You deal with the best information you have at the time."

Brownback says he has no information on news reports that Chalabi is being investigated for allegedly passing secrets to Iran. And he is no longer talking to the Iraqi dissident.

"I haven't talked to him in probably five months, maybe six. No, it's been longer than that," he says.

Brownback became important to Chalabi by virtue of the Kansan's placement on the Senate's foreign-relations subcommittee, a plum assignment for a new Senator.