{"id":49686,"date":"2024-10-16T10:13:49","date_gmt":"2024-10-16T18:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/?p=49686"},"modified":"2024-10-16T11:30:48","modified_gmt":"2024-10-16T19:30:48","slug":"bob-woodward-badly-misquotes-russian-fm-lavrov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2024\/10\/16\/bob-woodward-badly-misquotes-russian-fm-lavrov\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Woodward Badly Misquotes Russian FM Lavrov in His New Book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I emailed <em>Washington Post<\/em> reporter Bob Woodward regarding his new book <em><a href=\"https:\/\/books.google.com\/books\/about\/War.html?id=1kAYEQAAQBAJ&amp;source=kp_book_description\">War<\/a><\/em>:<\/p>\n<p>Dear Bob,<\/p>\n<p>You have misquoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on page 88 of your new book, and significantly altered the meaning of his statement.<\/p>\n<p>Lavrov\u2019s full quote was: <i>\u201cThose who mechanically repeat the points made in Bucharest and insist that \u2018third countries\u2019 have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement are playing with fire. I am convinced that they cannot be unaware of this.\u201d <\/i>Statement by Sergey Lavrov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, at the Twenty-Eighth Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council, <a href=\"https:\/\/osce.org\/files\/f\/documents\/a\/c\/506840.pdf\">December 2, 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Here is your version from page 88 of <em>War<\/em>, to compare to the original above: <i>\u201c\u2018Third countries\u2019 \u2014 meaning, the United States \u2014 \u2018have no right to express their position on the issue of NATO enlargement and are playing with fire,\u2019 Lavrov warned, \u2018I am convinced that they cannot be aware of this.\u2019\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>You omitted everything before \u201cthird countries,\u201d and failed to put brackets around his capital T, to indicate it was not truly the beginning of the sentence, importantly losing the context that he was discussing others: \u201cThose who &#8230; repeat and insist that,\u201d at the beginning. You also added \u201c\u2014 meaning, the United States \u2014\u201d after \u201cthird countries,\u201d when Lavrov clearly meant Russia, and added the word \u201cand\u201d after \u201cenlargement\u201d to make it at least make sense grammatically, if in no other way. But you did not put brackets around the <em>and<\/em> as though you are sure that was what he meant to say. Perhaps because you knew that he did not?<\/p>\n<p>The sentence as reproduced in your book makes no sense at all in English without the addition of the word \u201cand.\u201d <i><\/i><\/p>\n<p>And it makes no sense whatsoever in context: You would have us accept that the Russian foreign minister believes and said out loud that the United States of America is a \u201cthird country\u201d which has \u201cno right\u201d to an opinion on the size of its own military alliance, only he does, and that the US is \u201cplaying with fire\u201d by having an opinion, rather than by disregarding Russia\u2019s \u2014 really?<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any comment? Thanks!<\/p>\n<p>Best,<br \/>\nScott Horton<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I emailed Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward regarding his new book War: Dear Bob, You have misquoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on page 88 of your new book, and significantly altered the meaning of his statement. Lavrov\u2019s full quote was: \u201cThose who mechanically repeat the points made in Bucharest and insist that \u2018third countries\u2019 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-49686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49686"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49717,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49686\/revisions\/49717"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49686"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=49686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}