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 for the mistake and the failure to
correct it. We also note other serious historical errors in the Waller
article containing the bogus quote