Salena Zito of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review lands an exclusive interview with outgoing Republican Senator Rick Santorum. Here's a bit:

During the preceding months of his re-election bid, he never wavered in his support for Rumsfeld or the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, even as both plummeted in public-opinion polls.

He chose to "run with my convictions rather than run away from them, even if they were unpopular and even though they may have cost me my seat," he said, "... because that is how important I believe that they were and still are."

He said he was unimpressed by the Iraq Study Group's report after reading a summary of its 79 recommendations, dismissing it as "not worth reading ... a bunch of contradictory suggestions, with no clear plan other than the fact that we have to get out, and that means to surrender."

He criticized news coverage of the war in Iraq, declaring: "I have always said that if World War II was covered like this war, I really, very seriously, doubt that we would have ever won that war. ... The bottom line is, the media -- and I am not saying that they are intending to do this -- but simply by what they are doing, without question, it is aiding the terrorists and their objective."

Read the whole thing.