Open thread: Palin on ABC; Update: Gibson distorts Palin’s Iraq prayer; Update: Video of Iraq prayer comments included in segment

We’re still an hour away from World News Tonight, but ABC’s already starting to tease quotes so we’re likely to see web video before they go on the air. Here’s your thread to comment. Currently bannering at their homepage:

EXCLUSIVE: GOV. SARAH PALIN WARNS WAR MAY BE NECESSARY IF RUSSIA INVADES ANOTHER COUNTRY

TV Newser has other quotes but so far they’re the most platitudinous platitudes. Stand by for updates. Exit question: When is it appropriate to mix medications?

Update: From what I understand, they’ll run part of the interview on the 6:30 news, then the rest on Nightline at 11:35. Use this thread for both. They’ll do another interview tomorrow and that’ll run mostly on 20/20 at 10 p.m., with other portions possibly to run on WNT and Nightline.

Update: Here’s a partial transcript. Good to see Charlie did his homework:

GIBSON: You said recently, in your old church, “Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.” Are we fighting a holy war?

PALIN: You know, I don’t know if that was my exact quote.

GIBSON: Exact words.

PALIN: But the reference there is a repeat of Abraham Lincoln’s words when he said — first, he suggested never presume to know what God’s will is, and I would never presume to know God’s will or to speak God’s words.

But what Abraham Lincoln had said, and that’s a repeat in my comments, was let us not pray that God is on our side in a war or any other time, but let us pray that we are on God’s side.

That’s what that comment was all about, Charlie.

GIBSON: I take your point about Lincoln’s words, but you went on and said, “There is a plan and it is God’s plan.”

Totally untrue, but that’s what he gets for relying on the Associated Press, which took the liberty of bowdlerizing her quote mid-sentence in order to make it fit the narrative they were trying to build of her as some fundie who thinks she can read God’s mind. Here’s my post on the subject from last Thursday. Read it and see just how egregious the distortion here is.

Update: They’re also exaggerating what she said with their teaser, which makes it sound like she wants to unilaterally guarantee the security of Russian satellites. Read the excerpt linked above and you’ll see she simply means admitting Georgia and Ukraine to NATO and bringing them under the aegis of the all-for-one principle, which is McCain’s position. In the meantime, here’s what she says we should do: “It doesn’t have to lead to war and it doesn’t have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.”

Update: Two clips are already up in case the transcript’s not good enough. Here and here.

Update: This doesn’t excuse them entirely since only viewers who were paying extremely close attention will have noticed the distortion, but ABC did show the actual 15-second video of her Iraq prayer.

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