A number of sites, including WizBang are pointing out another lie from the Associated Press, this time one that relies on a major distortion of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech at the Republican National Convention.
According to the Associated Press, Schwarznegger couldn’t have seen Soviet tanks as a boy as he claimed,
Austrian historians are challenging California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and that he left a “Socialist” country when he moved away in 1968.
Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: “I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes.”
Historians, however, are questioning Schwarzenegger’s version of postwar history — if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America’s most populous state.
“It’s a fact — as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria,” the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.
But Schwarzenegger was quite clear in his speech that he saw tanks when he visited the Soviet-occupied part of Austria, not in his hometown which was not under Soviet occupation,
When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria. I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector.
The Associated Press can’t be bothered to include the “I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector” line from the speech. Thank goodness we have major media organizations to act as gatekeepers and filter out unimportant information before it reaches the masses.
Source:
Historians dispute Schwarzenegger’s convention comments. Associated Press, September 3, 2004.