The terror stuff is getting fully weird, isn't it?

I think the government knows a whole lot more about it than they're telling us.

And that's OK.

Even as a person who does the news for a living, I don't really have a huge problem with the government withholding certain details.

Sometimes I listen to reporters at press conferences and they drive me nuts. They keep asking the army guy when and where our next strike will be and the army guy keeps telling them he really can't say.

It must be a sort of bizarre theater for the news guys or something.

They know the army guy can't answer the question, but that doesn't stop them from asking again and again and again from a little different angle each time.

It's as if the reporters think that if they change the question a little bit, the army guy will forget that it was just like the question before and inadvertently answer it.

It's OK with me if the government doesn't tell us every little detail they know about a particular issue.

It would be silly for them to do that.

If they have a really good lead on whoever is mailing anthrax, they should keep that to themselves.

They can just let me know when they bust the guy and I'll be happy.

It all comes down to a matter of trust. Do we trust the government to handle this stuff?

Well, it would be easy to say no, wouldn't it? But you know what? I think I do trust the government in matters of terror and anthrax.

Here's why.

I will be the first to concede that government can be cumbersome, inefficient and even corrupt from time to time.

But generally, if you're a reporter and you want to uncover something seedy in the world of government, all you really need to do is follow the money or the power.

If there is something to be gained, look out. If somebody stands to make a lot of money or gain a lot of power, the temptation to be untrustworthy is great.

That's how we get things like Watergate, Iran/Contra, $600 Defense Department toilet seats or a new fire truck in your district.

But in the case of terror or anthrax, I don't believe the motivation is greed or power.

From the realistic, selfish point of view, the motivation of government officials is to keep from looking like idiots.

From the idealistic, patriotic point of view, the motivation is to save the lives of innocent Americans.

Truth be told, I think it's probably a little of both.

If the Centers For Disease Control didn't advise the postal service to close down quickly enough, well, that makes the CDC look bad and it hurts innocent Americans.

It doesn't line anybody's pockets or stack the deck in the next election.

Of course, you always run the risk of some government entity being disingenuous in an effort to cover mistakes, but generally, that cover-up thing rarely works.

The mistake always bubbles to the surface later on.

It's the motive that's important. And I really do trust the motives in this war on terrorism.

I think the CDC, the government and everybody else involved would just love to wipe out the anthrax threat tomorrow - whatever the motive.

And I think W and his administration would just love to wipe out all the terrorist networks in the world.

It's easy to second guess these people. It's easy to have that legendary 20/20 hindsight, but I think these people are giving it their best shot.

They don't want to screw it up. They're trying. But they are human, after all. They're not perfect. They will make mistakes.

I think they deserve a certain level of tolerance from the media and the public.

Lately, the media, with the Cable News Network leading the way, are starting to get a little testy. They want results. Now.

So we're hearing this talk of how the war is going nowhere and there is increasing media pressure for a stepped up campaign.

This is happening even though the "New War" is less than a month old.

I fully support the media as a watchdog. But I don't think the media should be crafting policy. But that's what I see happening. I see the media driving policy.

At the outset, our government warned us this would take time, maybe even years.

Yet less than a month into it, the media is pressuring the government to hurry up and topple the Taliban.

Russia tried to do that for seven years and couldn't make it happen. Yet CNN expects us to pull it off before Ramadan.

Seems kind of silly, doesn't it?

But it's more than silly. It's a bit dangerous. CNN parades legions of "policy experts" on their newscasts day in and day out.

Problem is, these "experts" are just people with opinions. They aren't armed with all the information they need to make policy decision.

We don't have all that information. Only the government does.

Yet these "experts" happily expound on how and when and why we should attack and how not to turn this war into another Vietnam "quagmire."

That's OK, it's a free country. These folks are entitled to their opinions just like anybody else. But as CNN streams this into our homes night after night, it tends to turn public opinion. When public opinion turns, sometimes the government reacts.

When that happens, you essentially have the media driving policy. I don't think that's a good thing.

And sometimes the media seem to get a little overzealous because they're trying really hard to give us some new, uncharted information.

The other night, for example, I was watching NBC, and they did this piece on agri-terror. They showed me all kinds of ways to mess with cattle and grain. And then they told me how little security there is in regard to farming.

I kept thinking to myself, "Wow, if I was a terrorist, this would be good information to have."

None of this is to say that the government should be given free rein and not be held accountable.

Quite the contrary. A free, vigorously skeptical press is the single greatest protection of our liberty. Countries where a free press doesn't exist are not fun places to live.

But today's U.S. media is hotly competitive. In the war for viewers, news outlets tend to speculate, postulate and theorize more than they investigate and report.

I guess I just wish the big guys in media would exercise a little more restraint. [[In-content Ad]]