GOP Rep. Chris Shays is gonna take plenty of heat for this one. At a debate this morning at the Stamford Marriott with antiwar Dem challenger Diane Farrell, Shays opined that we should have invaded Iraq "sooner" -- and not for WMDs. According to a transcript supplied by the Farrell campaign, Shays said:

Now let me just tell you something about the reality. We're there. And if we made mistakes we're still there. In my judgment we should have gone in sooner but not for weapons of mass destruction.

View Shays' remark below:

Shays didn't elaborate on this view. His remark came amid a long diatribe which included a scorching attack on Bush's handling of the war. View a fuller transcript after the jump.

Here are Shays' remarks on Iraq, according to a transcript from the Farrell campaign:

Now let me just tell you something about the reality. We're there. And if we made mistakes we're still there. In my judgment we should have gone in sooner but not for weapons of mass destruction. But we should never have fought it the way we did. I have huge disagreements with this White House and how they fought the war. And when my opponent says the President doesn't agree with me on timelines, so what? He's the President, that's his opinion, I have my opinion, it's different. She now blames me for disagreeing with the president. I don't get her, I honestly don't get her. So I'm supposed to agree with the president, because he doesn't think we should have timelines?

Shays has had a great deal of diffulty during this campaign explaining his ardent support for the war. Back in the spring, he said that withdrawal timetables were a bad idea because they would help terrorists. Then, in August, he came out and embraced the idea of a timeline. And then after that, he claimed that he hadn't changed his position.

To our knowledge, however, Shays has always supported the idea of the invasion. And today, he went considerably further, making it clear that he doesn't just think the invasion was a good idea. He thinks it should have been done sooner -- and not even for WMDs.