Washington ? Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback chastised fellow lawmakers and the Bush administration on Friday for focusing on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction rather than on stabilizing Iraq.

Like most of the other Kansas Republicans in Congress, Brownback disputed the need for a congressional investigation. The Senate Intelligence Committee began hearings on Thursday, but chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas has said an all-out investigation was premature.

Brownback said the questions were legitimate. “But our real focus should actually be on the future of Iraq at this point in time so that we can get Iraqis in charge and stop losing our soldiers,” he said.

“It’s like right after 9-11,” Brownback added. “People were asking questions about failures in the intelligence community, but it wasn’t the proper time to review intelligence at that time, because we needed to get on with trying to protect ourselves as much as we could.”

At issue is the Bush administration’s failure, so far, to find the Iraqi weapons. Questions, doubts and outright accusations are coming from Democrats, both on the presidential campaign trail and in Congress.

Roberts has dismissed some of the criticism as political, although he and the intelligence panel’s top Democrat both promised an objective look at prewar intelligence on Iraq and whether it was manipulated.

A fellow Kansas Republican, Rep. Todd Tiahrt, also cited presidential politics.

“These charges are politically motivated,” Tiahrt said. “They’re coming from people who were critical of the war, and I think it’s politics as usual in Washington. From what I’ve been able to tell, from talking with agencies and soldiers involved with the Iraq conflict, it appears that all the elements for weapons of mass destruction have been found at some time or another.”

Kansas Rep. Jim Ryun, a GOP member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he had enough evidence in that biological weapons labs had been discovered.

“These findings serve as proof that the regime was actively contemplating the use of weapons of mass destruction,” Ryun said.

In contrast, Republican Rep. Jerry Moran of Kansas said he was troubled by the evidence.

“If the search proves fruitless, I think it is justified for Congress to explore whether false intelligence or other reasons were the source of the misinformation,” Moran said.

The Kansas delegation’s only Democrat, Rep. Dennis Moore, said the nation deserved and needed to know if U.S. intelligence-gathering was faulty.