ABC News helps rehabilitate & polish Sarah Palin

ABC News is helping the Republican Party launch its cleaned-up sanitized phony version of the extremist right wing Sarah Palin to the American public and make seem as safe and sane and ready for the job, and in fact heralds its role in the spin campaign in a news release about her interview that they're milking for two days and turning into a prime time television special:

"Palin defended a previous statement in which she reportedly characterized the war in Iraq as a 'task from God.'

"Gibson quoted her as saying: 'Our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God.'"

"But Palin said she was referencing a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln.

"'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.'"

The words weren't "reported." Sarah Palin is on tape saying them. Shes been holed up for days with GOP experts, consultants, hypnotists and hacks, programming her to her to say whatever it is they want to put in her mouth and talk away her past. And you can decide whether she had Abraham Lincoln in mind or is some Republican Party hack found a way to spin it in that direction by running all her words through a database and seeing whose speeches came out:

Sarah Palin isn't Britney Spears.

Running for vice president of the United States, she shouldn't have the luxury of getting to choose a folksy rumpled old newsman to toss questions for her carefully-rehearsed interview answers, and then wrap it in a one-hour entertainment special that will show her in chummy B-roll shots and present her a way that obscures most all of the controversies and makes seem safe and prepared to lead this nation.

She's not. ABC News should have demanded she face a panel of journalists who can parry and thrust and not accept the party line. Instead, they're aiding in the scam.