Calling Arnold Schwarzenegger a liar, Atrios links to this report that historians in Austria claim that Arnold could not have seen a Soviet tank in his native Styria:

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Austrian historians are ridiculing California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for telling the Republican National Convention that he saw Soviet tanks in his homeland as a child and left a "Socialist" country when he moved away in 1968.

Recalling that the Soviets once occupied part of Austria in the aftermath of World War II, Schwarzenegger told the convention on Tuesday: "I saw tanks in the streets. I saw communism with my own eyes."

No way, historians say, challenging Schwarzenegger's knowledge of postwar history -- if not his enduring popularity among Austrians who admire him for rising from a penniless immigrant to the highest official in America's most populous state.

"It's a fact -- as a child he could not have seen a Soviet tank in Styria," the southeastern province where Schwarzenegger was born and raised, historian Stefan Karner told the Vienna newspaper Kurier.

And what might have been worth reporting by Atrios (and others) was what even CNN reported:

Margita Thompson, spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger, defended Schwarzenegger's speech.

"Never in there did the governor reference that the tanks were where he grew up. It was a reference to visiting Soviet-occupied Austria," she said.

It ought to be enough simply to show that Arnold never claimed there were Soviet tanks in Styria, because unless he said that he'd seen them there he can't logically be accused of saying he did say that. However considering the shrillness of the attacks against Arnold (who these days seems to be hated more than the religious right), I thought I should offer a little more.

Anyway, here's the transcript of Schwarzenegger's remarks:

When I was a boy, the Soviets occupied part of Austria.

I saw their tanks in the streets. I saw Communism with my own eyes. I remember the fear we had when we had to cross into the Soviet sector.
Growing up, we were told, "Don't look the soldiers in the eye. Just look straight ahead." It was a common belief that Soviet soldiers could take a man out of his own car and ship him back to the Soviet Union as slave labor.

The small red area inside the large green Soviet sector is Austria's capital, Vienna. Although it was being run by all four powers, in order to get there from anywhere in Austria it would have been necessary to travel through the surrounding Soviet sector. Vienna was just 75 miles from Graz, and while I don't know the exact mileage from Graz to the Soviet zone, it appears to be around 30-40 miles. (That's about a half-hour drive -- to reach Stalin's troops.)

Here's some historical background:

In early July 1945, the Allies agreed the borders dividing the country into the occupations zones, which had not been set beforehand unlike those of Germany. Vienna's city center came under four power control, but the remainder as divided into specific occupation zones. The Allied Council held ultimate authority in Austria, each power was represented by its Zonal commanders. Each power had the power of veto on decisions of the council.

Between 1946 and 1953 the Austrian government implemented more than 550 laws over the objection of the Soviet Union. One such measure was the Soviet seizure of German assets in July 1946 as war reparations. To protect the Austrian economy the Austrian government nationalized all German assets, but when the Soviet Union attempted to veto the nationalisation law it was overruled by the western allies. This did not prevent the Soviet Union from seizing assets in its occupation zone.

The Soviet Union attempted to block Austria's participation in the Marshall Plan and the KPO pulled out of the government over the issue. However, 1946 Control Agreement enabled Austria to freely sign up to the plan and also join the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation.

In 1955, the State Treaty was sign which restored Austria's sovereignty and ended the Allied occupation. The country effectively became a neutral, much like Switzerland. Negotiations began in January 1947 and in 1948 the Soviet Union dropped its support for Yugoslavian claims against Austrian territory. In 1953, after Stalin died, the Austrian government sought to break the stalemate by proposing Austrian neutrality between the western and eastern military blocs. The Indian ambassador to Moscow acted as an intermediary between Austria and Moscow and the Soviet Union continued to insist that the fate of Germany be decided first.

In February 1955, the Soviet Union became willing to settle the Austrian question. Fours day or intense Austrian-Moscow negotiations produced a draft treaty based on Austrian neutrality. The Western Allies accepted, but grudgingly as they feared this would become a model for Germany and objected to a proposed four-power guarantee of Austrian neutrality, which they feared would allow Soviet intervention in Austria. This proposal was dropped under strong Western opposition.

The final treaty, signed on 15th May 1955 forbade unification with Germany or restoration of the Habsburgs and provided safeguards for Austria's Croat and Slovene minorities. Austrian neutrality and a ban on foreign military bases in Austria were later incorporated into the Austrian constitution by the Law of 26th October 26 1955. 40,000 Soviet troops in Austria were withdrawn by late September and the small number of Western troops that remained were withdrawn by late October 1955.

The situation was serious enough that it was feared that Vienna would face (and Americans would have to defend against) a Berlin-style blockade:

In 1945, Austria had been divided like Germany into four zones of occupation: a Soviet one in the East; an American zone west of it; a French zone in the Tyrol and Vorarlberg; and a British one in the southern provinces of Styria and Carinthia. Vienna like Berlin was divided into four allied sectors, but the center of the city was jointly administered by the four powers. Unlike in Berlin, where the western Allied had two airports in their sectors, their airfields near Vienna were in Soviet-controlled territory: Tulln-Langenlebarn for the Americans, and Schwechat - now Vienna International Airport - for the British and French. As an American study pointed out in the summer of 1948, in the case of a Soviet blockade "our forces would be trapped, unable to maintain themselves or to withdraw except by Soviet permission and on Soviet terms ... Our forces and their dependents would be at the mercy of the Soviet authorities and subject to whatever indignities Soviet policy might deem expedient."

To their credit, the Americans were not content to wait till this happened. In 1948. they upgraded the stockpiles for their garrison and the population of Vienna, and surveyed possible sites for airfields in Vienna. A first proposal concerned extending a street in the 17th district, but this would have been suitable only for smaller planes like the DC-3/C-47 "Dakota," under visual flight rules (VFR). A better site existed in the British zone, on the Simmeringer Haide in the 11th district, near the Central Cemetery.

Lieutenant General Geoffrey Keyes, the Commanding General, U.S. Forces Austria, expected to build there two 5,000 ft. runways, to handle a maximum amount of 1,500 tons daily to be flown into Vienna. Air Force officers warned against over-optimistic expectations, but Keyes pushed his plans forward. In August 1948, the Army Chief of Staff approved the provision of 1,500,000 square feet of "pierced steel planking" landing mats (for one 5,000 ft. and one shorter runway). It was pointed out "that the shipment of pierced plank to Vienna would be evaluated by the Russians as another indication of the firmness of our determination to maintain our position in Berlin and Vienna."

Schwarzenegger would have been 8 when the Russians finally pulled out, and 9 when the Hungarian refugees poured into Austria after the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Revolution. Arnold says he helped feed the refugees. I'm sure that will be doubted and questioned too; after all, the Hungarian freedom fighters were called "hooligans" by the lovers of Soviet peace.

Considering Stalin's status as one of the greatest mass murderers of all time, why the haste to attack someone clearly in a position to have been menaced by him as a child? I realize politics is a partisan game, but of all the things to attack Arnold Schwarzenegger for, why this? If they want to make him into a liar, why make him into a liar about Communism? The transparency of the smear is so obvious that I can't help but wonder if he's simply being hated for being anti-Communist.

If he is, I can't think of a better reason to love the guy.