Columnist Uses Fabricated Abraham Lincoln Quote

[valluco]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/ea..._id=1003545478

'Wash Times' Columnist Uses Fabricated Abraham Lincoln Quote

By E&P Staff

Published: February 14, 2007 9:00 AM ET

NEW YORK The drive by some political and military figures -- and pundits -- to paint those who oppose the war in Iraq as traitors or at least not supporting the troops has hit another low, with a Washington Times columnist trumpeting an incendiary quote from Abraham Lincoln shown to be a fabrication last year.

Frank Gaffney, Jr. opened his latest column with this: "Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged." — President Abraham Lincoln.

He continues: "It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated — let alone applied — today. Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to 'damage morale and undermine the military' while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what cons utes inappropriate behavior in time of war."

One problem: Lincoln never said it.

Brooks Jackson at FactCheck.org, the Annenberg Public Policy Center group, studied the sudden appearance of the quote last August. Why? He had found that his Web search "brought up more than 18,000 references to it."

He reported: "Supporters of President Bush and the war in Iraq often quote Abraham Lincoln as saying members of Congress who act to damage military morale in wartime 'are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged.'

"Republican candidate Diana Irey used the 'quote' recently in her campaign against Democratic Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, and it has appeared thousands of times on the Internet, in newspaper articles and letters to the editor, and in Republican speeches.

"But Lincoln never said that. The conservative author who touched off the misquotation frenzy, J. Michael Waller, concedes that the words are his, not Lincoln's. Waller says he never meant to put quote marks around them, and blames an editor [at the magazine Insight] for the mistake and the failure to correct it. We also note other serious historical errors in the Waller article containing the bogus quote."

Jackson later provided this update: "Candidate Irey retracted the quote and apologized hours after this article appeared."

Waller wrote to Jackson concerning the 2003 article: "Oddly, you are the first to question me about this. I'm surprised it has been repeated as often as you say. My editors at the time didn't think it was necessary to run a correction in the following issue of the magazine, and to my knowledge we received no public comment."

Gaffney is a regular columnist at the Washington Times.


E&P Staff

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Are any of you suprised?

[Oh, Gee!!]

I think Lincoln also said that we should fight them over there, before we have to fight them over here. George Washington once said that we would be greeted as liberators.

[ThomasGranger]

And Lincoln never gets credit for remarking during his presidential election campaign, "I'm a uniter, not a divider."

[Cant_Be_Faded]

looks like corso got caught up in his own corsoes, CORSO

[PixelPusher]

I think Lincoln also said that we should fight them over there, before we have to fight them over here. George Washington once said that we would be greeted as liberators.

The British thought they would be greeted as liberators by the loyalists in the Southern states when they went with their "Southern Campaign" during the Revolutionary War.

[ChumpDumper]

I am not surprised. Insight magazine seems to exist only to make stuff up so other conservative news outlets can try to pass it off as a legitimate source, then fiegn ignorance when the lie is exposed.

[PixelPusher]

EDIT: I mixed up Waller and Gaffney.

[boutons_]

"damage morale and undermine the military' while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what cons utes inappropriate behavior"

... such as dubya/ head starting a bogus war based on lies like Saddam-WTC which a majority of the US and military believed was true in 2002/03, and which head kept repeating for years as the Saddam-WTC link was thoroughly discredited.