Joseph I. Lieberman aggressively used an opponent's record of missed votes to help him win his first Senate race in 1988. Now, Lieberman is the incumbent under attack for absenteeism....

Talking to reporters from Washington, Lieberman said he would have been present if his vote had the potential to tip the balance. His first reaction to the question of missed votes was to tear into Lamont.

"The first thing to say is Ned Lamont is running one of the most negative campaigns I can remember. He constantly criticizes, criticizes, criticizes," Lieberman said.

Lieberman campaign spokeswoman Tammy Sun yesterday said it was a further effort by Lamont to distort Lieberman's record.

"(He) can't help doing anything but attack Joe Lieberman," she said of Lamont in an e-mailed response, adding that Lieberman has a 94 percent voting record since taking office in 1989....

The Senate's Web site confirms the data provided by Lamont, and Sun did not dispute the absences. Sun last week said Lieberman missed Thursday's "typical, party-line procedural votes" because he was accepting an award for his work on youth issues from the Kennedy Center.

Lieberman’s spokeswoman, Tammy Sun, has referred to the tally as "procedural" and Lamont was asked if, in fact, the vote was just symbolic, since Lieberman’s vote would not have made a difference.

Lamont was introduced by John Kelley, 45, of New Haven, a local attorney who spent five months in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 as a major in the Army Reserves, advising judges on cases against Saddam Hussein and his government.

Kelley said while he worked in the presidential palace in Baghdad, they always had a television tuned to the Fox News network and, "I would frequently see Sen. Lieberman defending the policies in Iraq and I was wondering what country was this man talking about?"

"It’s certainly not the Iraq that I saw out the window of the presidential palace," Kelley said. "It’s certainly not the Iraq that I walked out of my trailer every day and looked at," he said.

In remarks prepared for a speech Wednesday at Yale Law School, Lamont said that President Bush and those who support him have led America in a dangerous new direction since the Sept. 11 attacks and argued that the Iraq war has diverted national security resources from the war on terror.

"We have sacrificed our daughters and sons and our treasure in a war we didn't have to fight," Lamont said. "We have ignored the real threats and security needs in the war we should be fighting against terrorists."