Nbadan
02-17-2007, 12:15 AM
By Sam Bishop
News-Miner Washington Bureau
Published February 16, 2007
WASHINGTON — Rep. Don Young on Thursday added his voice to the speechifying about President Bush’s Iraq policy and bolstered it with what he thought was the voice of President Abraham Lincoln.
The man who Young quoted, though, was not the nation’s 16th president but a professor at a Washington, D.C., graduate school.
“I’d like to make a quote,” Young began after being granted his five minutes on the House floor. “‘Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.’”
The quote, Young said, came from Lincoln, “who had the same problem this president had with a very unpopular war, the same problem with people trying to redirect the commander-in-chief.”
However, the words Young attributed to Lincoln were written by J. Michael Waller, a professor at the Institute of World Politics. They metamorphosed into the illegitimate Lincoln quote on Dec. 23, 2003, in a column that Waller wrote for Insight, a conservative weekly magazine published by the owners of The Washington Times.
News Miner (http://newsminer.com/2007/02/16/5274)
What a dee dee dee...
Here's what Lincoln really said...
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
Lincoln wrote these words while America was at war with Mexico, under the presidency of James Polk, and while Lincoln was a member of Congress. But Lincoln did more than talk about the fraud that had been used to launch that illegal and imperialistic war. He introduced a resolution demanding that Polk provide proof. Polk claimed to have launched that war only after American blood had been shed on American soil. Lincoln's resolution required Polk to identify the spot where that blood had been shed.
"Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly," Lincoln said of the wartime President. "Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation." ...
American chronicle (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=20870)
News-Miner Washington Bureau
Published February 16, 2007
WASHINGTON — Rep. Don Young on Thursday added his voice to the speechifying about President Bush’s Iraq policy and bolstered it with what he thought was the voice of President Abraham Lincoln.
The man who Young quoted, though, was not the nation’s 16th president but a professor at a Washington, D.C., graduate school.
“I’d like to make a quote,” Young began after being granted his five minutes on the House floor. “‘Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.’”
The quote, Young said, came from Lincoln, “who had the same problem this president had with a very unpopular war, the same problem with people trying to redirect the commander-in-chief.”
However, the words Young attributed to Lincoln were written by J. Michael Waller, a professor at the Institute of World Politics. They metamorphosed into the illegitimate Lincoln quote on Dec. 23, 2003, in a column that Waller wrote for Insight, a conservative weekly magazine published by the owners of The Washington Times.
News Miner (http://newsminer.com/2007/02/16/5274)
What a dee dee dee...
Here's what Lincoln really said...
"Allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so, whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect, after you have given him so much as you propose. If, today, he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him, 'I see no probability of the British invading us' but he will say to you 'be silent; I see it, if you don't.' The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons: Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us."
Lincoln wrote these words while America was at war with Mexico, under the presidency of James Polk, and while Lincoln was a member of Congress. But Lincoln did more than talk about the fraud that had been used to launch that illegal and imperialistic war. He introduced a resolution demanding that Polk provide proof. Polk claimed to have launched that war only after American blood had been shed on American soil. Lincoln's resolution required Polk to identify the spot where that blood had been shed.
"Let him answer fully, fairly, and candidly," Lincoln said of the wartime President. "Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation." ...
American chronicle (http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=20870)