A tornado warning half an hour before the Story County campaign office of Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., opened did not stop more than 60 people from coming to see the presidential hopeful.

“This is perfect,” Brownback said of the weather upon his arrival. The senator said to his supporters that a tornado was the perfect way to welcome a person from Kansas.

“We’ve been taking the road to Ames,” Brownback said.

The opening of his campaign office, 526 Main St., was the last stop in a four-day, 27-city bus tour through Iowa.

Brownback spoke for approximately 15 minutes, focusing mostly on his strong anti-abortion stance, urging his audience not to compromise their values when they cast their votes for president.

“Sam is a true leader in human rights – real human rights,” said Bud Montang, of Ames, who introduced Brownback. “He’s also worked hard to ensure that we confirm the right judges who interpret the law and not legislate from the bench.”

Brownback said he saw in his supporters a desire for anti-abortion candidates to be unapologetic about their stance, and instead of merely saying that “family values” were important to them, trusting supporters to infer a anti-abortion position from those words.

“They want somebody that will stand up and say they are pro-life, from beginning to natural end,” he said. “From the womb to Darfur to whoever the person is. All human life is sacred, it’s unique, it’s beautiful.”

He said to his supporters that this country is only “one justice away” from overturning Roe v. Wade. He said he wanted to be the president who appointed the next supreme court justice who would make that possible.

“We’ve got to get the basics right,” Brownback said, referring to those “basics” as life, faith, family – including defining marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman – and freedom.

Brownback said rebuilding those basics was important to winning the “long-term war with Islamic fascism.”

The “Islamic fascists,” Brownback said, are not all Muslims or even a majority, but they are, he said, “a dedicated minority.”

He said in order to win the war, Americans needed to be strong and clear-minded, fighting aggressively, staying on the offensive.

Brownback talked about his desire to limit federal spending, and closed by encouraging supporters to have hopeful, optimistic ideas for America.

The senator, in addition to Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., have proposed a bill that supports advising the Iraqi government to form three independant states, one for the Sunni population, one for Shiites and a third for Kurds.

Brownback said the Iraqi constitution allows for the formation of three states.

“What I would do is really get the Sunni and Shia leaders together and say, ‘Look, we’ve got to do something. This is not working,'” he said. “And we don’t have a long time frame here, because every life is sacred to us, and we’re losing too many Americans in Iraq.”

During the Republican primary debate in Columbia, S.C., Brownback said in the hypothetical situation of having a terrorist in custody who had information concerning a nuclear threat to the United States, he would do whatever was possible to get the information – including aggressive means of interrogation such as water boarding.

When asked how he reconciled “aggressive means of interrogation” with his strong commitment to the sanctity of all human life, Brownback said the large number of human lives at stake would necessitate what he said was similar to “a just war doctrine,” where some kind of action needed to be taken to protect others.