Sen: VIDEO - DeWine (R) AWOL on Intelligence Panel

This just in - a hard-hitting new video about the inexcusable absenteeism of Sen. Mike DeWine (R-Cedarville) on the Senate Intelligence Committee, including skipping a meeting where CIA Director George Tenet warned about the threat of Osama bin Laden seven months before 9/11:

[I have removed the embedded link, but the video is available here.]

From the press release:

"When the security of our nation was at stake before and after the U.S. went to war, Mike DeWine did not show up for duty," said Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Representative Brown.

While he missed nearly half of all public meetings of the committee, including hearings where CIA Director George Tenet warned of the threat Osama bin Laden posed to the United States, DeWine still voted to go to war with Iraq based on false intelligence. DeWine voted against investigating intelligence failures when no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, and recently shelved for months and then dismissed a report in which the Bush administration's intelligence agencies concluded that the war in Iraq was mobilizing jihadists and increasing the terrorist threat to the United States.

According to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), "Attendance is very, very important. Attendance is where you gain the experience and the expertise to do the job." [CNN, 8/19/04] Asked about his attendance to classified meetings of the Intelligence Committee, DeWine said, "I cannot put a figure on it. I can make something up, but that is not the type of person I am" [Plain Dealer 10/6/06].