WELL, THERE'S YOUR PROBLEM

Here's an article from a major national newspaper that gets the whole ties, links, collaboration distinction exactly right:

Putin's statement came as Bush, Vice President Cheney and other administration officials are defending their statements -- made before the war and as recently as this week -- that Hussein's government had a relationship with Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization. Earlier this week, the staff of the commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks said there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, "but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship."

And seeing that it suddenly struck me what a big part of the problem was. This paragraph is stuck in a story on the Russian President saying he'd passed the US intell on Saddam's intentions to commit anti-US terrorism, important enough, but clearly on the peripheries on the story. But it's written by a national security beat reporter, Walter Pincus. The bulk of the stories we've all been complaining about, all these front page stories about what's been said by the Commission, and how the Commission has differed from the President, and the President has refused to give up on the argument -- all those stories have been written by political and White House beat reporters -- Dana Milbank, Richard Stevenson, David Sanger -- and covered by broadcast's White House beat reporters -- David Gregory, John Roberts, Terry Moran.

I'm not excusing their work, I'm not saying it was any less the result of the combination of sloppiness and pissiness I thought it was yesterday.

I'm saying that national security beat guys would maybe be just too dern interested in the story to allow themselves to get swept up in that kind of games playing.