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

[ck4829]

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

[saltpoint]

1. It's permissable. The Washington TIMES is a fake newspaper.

[Gman]

2. "For right-wing pundits, agitating the base clearly trumps getting the story right."

Says it all.

[Beer Snob-50]

3. the party of personal responsiblility lives on

what would have happened if this were dan rather?

[maine_raptor]

4. You want a Lincoln quote? I'll give you one. And it's verified.

"At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume I, "Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum,of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838), p. 109.

[whistle]

5. This quote was used on Rush Limbaugh earlier in the week by

...one of the more right wing guest hosts on that show. I don't know the guys name but he was doing a complete prefabricated history of president al actions and rights I was driving at the time and so I listened for about ten minutes and he covered Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Lincoln and talked about how the democratic peace movement always opposed the right course, blab blah blab. I finally switched stations. Did anyone hear that tripe?

[bryant69]

6. There is something poetic in them using a fake Lincoln quote

Didn't he also say "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds." Seems like the last thing Republicanoids want to do this day.

Bryant
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