Conservatives, Washington Times, use fake quote to attack Anti-Bush Congresspeople

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Washington Times columnist and prominent neoconservative Frank Gaffney opened his Wednesday column with a forceful quote attributed to President Abraham Lincoln:

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

This quote may have been news to Lincoln scholars, but it appears thousands of times on the Internet. It was even cited last year at a DC press conference by Congressman Jack Murtha’s Republican opponent, Diana Irey.

The quote was especially familiar to close readers of Unification Church publications, which include the Washington Times and Insight magazine.

That’s because the quote is fake and first appeared in the pages of Insight magazine. J. Michael Waller opened his 12/23/03 article, “Democrats Usher in An Age of Treason,” with those words. He later explained in an email to Factcheck.org:

"The supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one. It was my lead sentence in the article that a copy editor mistakenly turned into a quote by incorrectly inserting quotation marks."

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/2007/02/washington_time_1.html