John McCain's campaign is denying a suggestion made yesterday that the candidate's lengthy response yesterday to the crisis in Georgia was lifted in part from Wikipedia.



"We did not copy Wikipedia in Sen. McCain’s remarks," said spokesman Brian Rogers.



Three portions of the GOP nominee's statement yesterday were seized upon by an editor for the online encyclopedia and sent to blogger Taegan Goddard with the claim that the words seemed to match the Wiki entry for Georgia.



The first two instances, Goddard noted, seemed especially similar.



Wiki's entry has Georgia as "one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion."



McCain's statement said Georgia was "one of the world's first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion."



On the country's history, Wiki has: "After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis."



McCain said: "After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises."



McCain aides countered that there are only so many ways to state basic historical facts and dates and that any similarities to Wikipedia were only coincidental. But they wouldn't say outright that it wasn't consulted.



The deeper concern is that the claim could undermine McCain's expertise on foreign affairs — one of the campaign's cornerstones against the more inexperienced Obama.



To rebut this notion, McCain's campaign shared an internal e-mail from McCain's top speechwriter Mark Salter laying out the directive from the candidate himself.



"Jsm just called," Salter wrote Sunday afternoon, reffering to the Arizona senator's initials in a message to top McCain campaign aides and his Senate chief of staff. "He would like to explain a little georgian history. Old nation. Absorbed into ussr. Independent after cold war. Plagued by corruption. Then rose revolution. President us educated."



Then, Salter added, McCain wanted to explain why the issue is important. "Intimidating and laying marker for others in near abroad like ukraine. Pipeline etc. Then get into his recommendations."



McCain's statement yesterday followed this exact path, delving into the history of the country and their relationship with Moscow before laying out why the violence mattered to the outside world and what should be done to address the situation.

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