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An apparent misquote thrust Berkeley – once again – into the national spotlight on Wednesday when the a Wall Street Journal Web site columnist attacked Councilmember Dona Spring for anti-war comments that she says were falsely attributed to her. 

At a press conference Thursday, Spring said she was misquoted in an article that appeared in the Daily Californian on Oct. 10. as saying “The United States is now a terrorist nation. According to the Taliban, (the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan) are terrorist attacks.”  

“I never denounced or condemned the United States,” Spring said at Thursday’s press conference. “I believe what I was trying to say was that U.S. bombing must seem like a terrorist attack to the innocent people in Afghanistan.” 

Spring received hundreds of e-mails from around the country Wednesday after a columnist for the Wall Street Journal’s Web site, James Taranto, denounced Spring’s “misquote” as “idiotic” under the heading “Berkeley’s useless idiots.”  

At Spring’s request, Taranto included a clarification letter written by Spring in his Thursday column. The Daily Californian, an independent student newspaper at UC Berkeley, also printed a letter from Spring clarifying her comments on Thursday.  

Spring asked Daily Californian Editor Janny Hu for a correction, but Hu said, after reviewing the reporter’s notes, she was standing by the quotes as printed. 

According to Mayor Shirley Dean’s executive assistant Tamlyn Bright, Dean received nearly 200 hostile e-mails from all over the country in response to the Wall Street Journal Web site column.  

Last month, Dean’s office was besieged by telephone calls after conservative radio talk show host, G. Gordon Liddy, broadcast the mayor’s office telephone number to his estimated 9 million listeners after criticizing Berkeley for temporarily removing the American flags from all fire department vehicles during a protest.  

Wednesday’s renewed national attention spurred Dean to quickly send out press releases denouncing Spring’s attributed comments in the Daily Californian. According to the release, Dean and her three moderate colleagues, councilmembers Polly Armstrong, Betty Olds and Miriam Hawley disagree with Spring’s “action and words.” 

The press release also referred to a resolution the council majority had attempted to pass last week. 

Spring had tried to put an emergency item on the council’s agenda Tuesday, which, if approved, would have had the city send letters to Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, Rep. Barbara Lee and President George Bush asking them to do whatever possible to end the bombing of Afghanistan. The resolution further called for the council meeting to be adjourned “in memory of their innocent civilians in Afghanistan being harmed and made refugees due to the bombing.” 

The nine-member council failed to put the emergency item on the agenda. To add an emergency item to a agenda requires six votes – the council voted in favor of the resolution 5-4. The item will appear on next week’s council agenda. Because the item will not have emergency status at the next meeting, it will require only five votes for approval. 

Spring said she is rewording the item so that it is more sensitive to Americans who lost their lives in terrorist attacks on Sept. 11. 

In her press statement, the mayor said she and her three colleagues were “saddened that five members of the City Council would bring this issue to the council and use such inflammatory language.” It went on to say “that this is a time for reflection and more thoughtful responses and not for inflammatory rhetoric from the 60s.” 

At the press conference, Spring countered that it was irresponsible of Dean to reprint the misquote in her press release. Spring, who supports the dismantling of the Taliban, said that her resolution is only meant to express concern for innocent Afghanis who will die as a result of the American bombing. Spring added that since Sept. 11, Berkeley has unfairly become a “whipping boy” for the more conservative corporate media. 

“Anyone who questions the war effort is attacked mercilessly,” Spring said. “The hysteria is so great we are not able to have rationale debate.”