Topeka ? No weapons of mass destruction; no problem.

U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas, said Monday he would have supported going to war with Iraq even if Saddam Hussein had none of the weapons.

“We knew at that time, and we have hard evidence today, he had terrorists on his soil and he had used chemical weapons,” Brownback said, referring to Saddam.

And that, Brownback said, was a lethal combination.

“I cannot depend upon Saddam Hussein not to mix these two,” he said. Brownback has been an ardent supporter of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

In the days before the war started, Bush was emphatic Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and was poised to use them against the United States.

The fact no weapons have been found, Brownback said, represents a failure of intelligence.

“I don’t think we had very good human intelligence assets in the region, or we didn’t know how to assess the information we were given,” he said.

But Brownback said the United States made the right decision to attack.

Saddam had used dangerous weapons, attacked neighboring countries and killed thousands of his own people, he said.

Brownback said the long-term policy to establish democratic societies in the region meant the United States “had to deal with Saddam Hussein.”