His name is Daniel Brewster, and he wishes to change his war record — and the country’s. He has known previous wars. He was a decorated U.S. Marine lieutenant in World War II, and came home to serve two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and one in the U.S. Senate. But then he ran into his second war, in Vietnam, when 58,000 American soldiers lost their lives and Brewster lost his political career.

He was Lyndon Johnson’s man in the U.S. Senate when Vietnam was still perceived as a Democratic war. He voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution plunging America deep into combat. A great mistake, he calls it now, but no less a mistake than the country’s current disaster in Iraq.

This one, he says, it’s not too late to stop. He brings it up now because a remarkable meeting is scheduled later this week, when Brewster and five other U.S. senators from Maryland, past and present, are to lunch privately at the Maryland Club: former Democratic Sens. Paul Sarbanes, Joseph Tydings and Brewster, former Republican Sen. Charles (Mac) Mathias, and current Democratic senators Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin.

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It is, according to Brewster, merely a gathering of old friends with no specific political agenda. But Iraq weighs heavily on all their minds, he said, and he has wondered if the group might issue a joint statement of their collective revulsion over this war.

“I certainly haven’t cleared it with anyone,” Brewster, 83, was saying the other day, “and I know the intention of the lunch is just to have everyone get together. But my belief is that it was a terrible mistake to invade Iraq, and continuing to send our young people over there is a further mistake. I’d like to think us old has-beens might congratulate the current senators on their stand, and urge them to continue.”

Both Mikulski and Cardin have criticized the war, as did Sarbanes before he retired. On the telephone from his home in Chevy Chase the other day, Mathias, 84, said, “I’ve been against this war. If the group of us could come to some kind of an agreement, and work out the details, I’d love to see us make some kind of statement about it.”

Brewster said Tydings, the primary organizer of this week’s lunch, did not want to turn it into a political launching pad. Several phone calls to Tydings were not returned.

“When I think about my support for the war in Vietnam now,” said Brewster, “I wish I could do it over. But I was a Johnson supporter and was trying to be loyal. I think about all those lost lives, and I wish I had spoken against it. But it’s not too late to talk about Iraq.”

In Chicago, where the Democrats gathered for their 1968 convention, Brewster headed Maryland’s delegation. That was the year the nation came undone from the war, assassinations and riots, and Chicago was one of its most traumatic moments.

And there was Brewster on national television, at the White House’s directive, thanking Chicago Mayor Dailey for being such a gracious host, thanking Chicago for its warm welcome — while, outside the convention hall, Dailey’s police were cracking their nightsticks against the skulls of hundreds of war protesters.

“They wanted me to go on national TV, introducing a resolution thanking Dailey,” Brewster recalled, “and as I’m talking, in the panel next to me on the TV screen, there’s Dailey’s police, beating hell out of the people in the park. I thought my career was over in that moment — and it was.”

It was the war and, ironically, Mathias, bringing it to an end. The two men had been law school classmates. Brewster was an usher at Mathias’ wedding, and Mathias is godfather to one of Brewster’s sons. Mathias and Brewster served together in the House. Then it was Mathias who took away Brewster’s senate seat.

“Vietnam,” Brewster said. “When he was asked about the war, Mac very wisely said, ‘Well, there’s got to be something better than what we’re doing.’ And I was Johnson’s man, and I was on record supporting it.”

It was the end of Brewster’s political career, and the beginning of Johnson’s Democratic war turning into Richard Nixon’s Republican war. In Brewster’s mind, it’s too late to change the awfulness of Vietnam. But maybe it’s not too late to salvage pieces of shattered Iraq.