Washington Times, Young And Abe

Frank Gaffney,Washington Times columnist and prominent neocon 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 is no doubt news to Lincoln scholars. However, it has appeared in the Washington Times and Insight Magazine as well as being cited thousands of times on the Internet. It was even used last year at a DC press conference by Congressman Jack Murtha’s Republican opponent, Diana Irey.

Alas the historians are correct - the quote is fake. It first appeared in the pages of Insight magazine when 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.

The Washington Times did finally pull the Gaffney column from its site, but not before Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska cited the quote on the House floor.

During floor debate on the Iraq war yesterday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) used the fake quote and attributed to Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime

After he left the House floor yesterday, Young found out that -- whoops -- he mistakenly put words in Abe's mouth. His spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, stated:

"Now that he's been informed these are not the actual words of Lincoln, he will discontinue attributing the words to Lincoln. However, he continues to totally agree with the message of the statement," Kenny said. "Americans, especially America's elected leaders, should not take actions during a time of war that damage the morale of our soldiers and military -- and that is exactly what this nonbinding resolution does."

And no, Kenny said, Young was "not advocating the hanging of Democrats."

Now we could just let this drop here, but I propose we adopt the Democrats theory first put forth during the Dan Rather scandal over the fake documents - it may be fake, but it is accurate.