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SHOW: NEWS FROM CNN 12:00

HEADLINE: Discussion with Senator DeWine

GUESTS: Mike DeWine

BYLINE: Wolf Blitzer

HIGHLIGHT:
Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio joins us to talk about the report prepared by the Joint Senate and House Intelligence Committee.

BODY:
WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Republican Senator Mike DeWine of Ohio joins us to talk about the report prepared by the Joint Senate and House Intelligence Committee. It will be made public in less than two hours. Senator DeWine is in the Senate rotunda.

Senator, thank you for joining us, a member of the intelligence committee.

SEN. MIKE DEWINE (R), OHIO: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Want to get to the report in a second, but your immediate reaction to the U.S. government's decision to release the photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein, was it a good idea ?

DEWINE: Well, I think, Wolf, it was a calculated decision by the United States government to really convince the Iraqi people that these two murderers are, in fact, dead. And you do that by showing their pictures, there's no more graphic way to do it than putting pictures out, puts it in newspapers and putting it on TV, and showing the Iraqi people that, yes in fact they're dead.

BLITZER: Another three soldiers killed from the 101st Airborne, not far from the area where this originally occurred in Mosul, up in the north. They seem to be dying almost one or two a day. The American public, Senator DeWine, is presumably getting very, very upset about this daily death toll involving U.S. forces.

DEWINE: Well, Wolf, it's a horrible tragedy. We are clearly in a guerrilla war now -- you can't call it anything else -- in Iraq. And you know, I've had an occasion to go to, I think, eight funerals in Ohio. There's nothing, you know, worse than to see this with the families in Ohio, and so yes, it is hitting home clearly.

BLITZER: Before we move on and talk about the 9/11 report, Senator DeWine, do you have any reason to believe that based on the deaths of Uday and Qusay Hussein, the U.S. might be closer to finding their father?

DEWINE: No, I don't know that we're any closer to finding the father. But I think this is a significant accomplishment. I think that, you know, there are people clearly in Iraq who will continue it fight us, continue to kill Americans, because they think that Saddam is coming back, they think he's going to be coming back and will be in power again, and the fact that we kill and have eliminated the two sons is significant.

BLITZER: Several of your colleagues, Senator Shelby, for example, Senator Graham of Florida, suggested that with hindsight going back to the events leading up to 9/11, a much better job could have been done in terms of coordination between the FBI, the CIA, other elements of the U.S. intelligence law enforcement community, seemed like the left hand wasn't necessarily talking to the right hand of the U.S. government. Based on what you know now, could 9/11 have been avoided?

DEWINE: Wolf, we'll never know that, it's a dangerous thing and a futile thing to do that speculation. We're not really dealing with the smoking gun, what we're dealing with always in intelligence is a puzzle. And the goal is to put as many pieces of the puzzle up on the wall as fast as you can to try to stop the terrorists, and sometime we're able to do that. Tragically, in regard to September 11, we didn't get enough pieces of the puzzle up there. But one of the lessons, as you have just pointed out, is we did not have enough coordination, we did not have enough information flowing together into one place to look at that information, but to say we could have prevented it...

BLITZER: Senator DeWine, I am going to interrupt you for a second.