Dueling Headlines - Moscow Edition

Today's NYT headline:

Obama Offered Deal To Russia in Secret Letter

CNN:

Obama Reaches Out To Russia Over Nuclear Iran

So which one is truthier? Well, the story is that Obama sent a letter to Medvedev suggesting that we wouldn't need to go ahead with the Bush era plan for a European Missle Defense system if Iran stopped persuing nuclear weapons. The body of the NYT article quotes both sides to disprove its own headline, which suggests pretty strongly that Obama unilaterally offered a specific deal to Russia without anyone else knowing about it. Red meat for Rush.

From the NYT story:

While [U.S. Officials] said it did not offer a direct quid pro quo, the letter was intended to give Moscow an incentive to join the United States in a common front against Iran.
[snip]
a press secretary for Dmitri A. Medvedev told the Interfax news agency that the letter did not contain any “specific proposals or mutually binding initiatives.”

Natalya Timakova said the letter was a reply to one sent by Mr. Medvedev shortly after Mr. Obama was elected.

So the real story seems to be that Medvedev worte to Obama re: relations in general and missle defense in particular, and Obama wrote back that if Russia helped stop Iran from developing weapons, the defense system (which Obama isn't too hot on anyway) might be unnecessary. No secret deal.

There are quite a few other headlines on this one, of course, but I'm only reporting on the ones I see on my iGoogle front page. Yahoo News went with Obama Hints Missle Shield Flexibility To Moscow and the story actually supports the headline. Free Republic, of course, ran with the NYT headline, which shows you something about our So Called Liberal Media. The Freeper comments are hilarious in their cowardice and paranoia, but I can't bring myself to link to that site here.

The verdict: There's a big difference between "suggesting" and "offering a deal." The NYT loses this one. Better luck next time.