DANNY HELLMAN ILLUSTRATION

Congressman Chris Shays is back again from Iraq this week, concluding his 18th trip to the region since voting in support of the pre-emptive war resolution in October 2002. The pro-choice Republican and one-time conscientious objector (to the Vietnam War), has confounded his constituent-critics with his steadfast assertion that he was right to authorize the Iraq War, despite his shifting positions on how and when to end it. He's promising a full update in a Thursday meeting with reporters on his latest trip (and, says a spokesman, isn't fielding questions from the Weekly until then); in the past Shays has explained his shifting positions on, for example, troop withdrawals and the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group by vaingloriously announcing that he follows "the truth" wherever it leads him.

But that tactically focused truth is running full-on into raw politics, and into a Washington Post Sunday report that detailed the lengths to which the Bush White House and Karl Rove went to ensure the loyal soldier Shays' re-election to the House last year.

The Post story reports that Shays was a "frequent beneficiary" of Bush administration largesse between April 2006 and election day that year, when he beat former Westport first selectwoman Diane Farrell.

During that period, the paper found, "Shays was able to announce at least 25 new federal grants totalling more than $46 million." Not to mention visits by "seven different Bush administration officials" during that time. For context, the Post reported that in the 15 months prior to April 2006, Shays "announced just $39 million in grants and got just one visit from a federal official."

Have these competing pressures—a constituency that's largely and vocally opposed to the war, a president who'll go to the mattresses to ensure Shays is reelected—finally started to get to the congressman? Has Chris Shays lost his mind in the incessant din of battle?

"You'd have to ask the voters if he's lost his mind," says John Orman, the Fairfield University political science professor best known for punking Joe Lieberman with his "Lieberman for Connecticut" party.

"Everybody knew his stand on the war; everybody knew at the time that they voted, so I wouldn't blame Chris as much as the electorate," says Orman. "The electorate is now met with buyers' remorse—but in my mind, he hasn't changed much."

Not much, but enough. Earlier this year Shays opposed implementing the Iraq Study Group's recommendations and instead supported Bush's surge (the ISG report did have a temporary-surge component, but all signs are that Bush's escalation is of the perma-surge variety). Then in June, Shays recommended reconvening the ISG, and got himself the full ration of outrage for doing so. The CT Post reported that he was "ticked off" at the criticism he was getting from the likes of Jon Soltz, chairman and co-founder of VoteVets.org, a veteran's organization that opposes Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

He's ticked off, all right. And pity the poor fool who gets in the man's way. Earlier this summer, Shays was forced to apologize after verbally haranguing a capital cop who refused to hold onto the congressman's cellphone. He had previously been pilloried for his rough handling, during a committee hearing, of widows of Blackwater employees murdered in Iraq.

And the man who once described the Abu Ghraib torture disgrace as merely a porn ring, clearly has the Rovian imperative of Total Control in mind when, upon his return home from a spring trip to Iraq, Shays in his "key recommendations" memo, writes that, even as Abu Ghraib was "highlighted in the U.S. media," an al-Qaeda torture chamber in Sadr City "was hardly covered in any media."

The point being: "It's all politics," says Soltz of Shays' motives. Soltz is a leading thorn in Shays' side; he and other veterans describe a congressman who succumbs to the Panglossian dog-and-pony show put on by the military whenever an elected official—and especially a Republican elected official, says a military source just back from Iraq—comes to Iraq for a "progress" report.

"He has more positions on Iraq than Mitt Romney has on abortion," says Soltz, a veteran of the Iraq and Kosovo wars. "You never know where he sits on Iraq. He can tell you what he wants, but he is lined up with George Bush on this war."

"He likes to brag about how many times he's been to Iraq," Soltz adds, "but he's never served, and he doesn't really know how the military works. Shays—all he talks about is tactics, but military people talk about diplomacy; I want to see a policy change, but that is not going to happen by adding more troops."

It didn't have to be this way, says Orman, who is surprised that Shays has not been more forcefully opposed to the war.

"I would have predicted that after six or seven trips, he would have come back and said, 'this is not going well.' Instead he kept supporting the president, and he won re-election on it—and he was in your face about it."

Orman, who describes himself as a "good acquaintance" of Shays, despite totally disagreeing with him on the war, echoes the point that the congressman is caught between Iraq and a hard place because of his loyalty to Bush. "He owes a lot to the Bush administration: They went out of their way to keep him in the base when he doesn't have the same right wing evangelical values. If he didn't support the war they would have cut him loose like they cut [2006 GOP senate candidate Alan] Schlesinger loose."

Jim Himes, the only announced opponent to Shays in the 2008 race, unsurprisingly believes the congressman has lost credibility over the war since being reelected, as the apparent pace of his testy flip-floppery has gone into warp speed. "He said in August of 2006 that he's supporting timelines [for withdrawing troops]. And he's voted against timelines three times since then," says Himes. "People recognize his waverings as a purely political maneuver. It's harder for him to pitch himself as a responsible foreign policy expert—the underpinnings of who he has claimed to be are rapidly eroding."

So, then, will Himes himself be heading to the Green Zone? "I don't know," he says. "The last thing I want to do is put any Americans at risk because I'm running around Iraq."

editor@fairfieldweekly.com