Bachmann: I Would Close Our (Non-Existent) Embassy In Iran

[blacken700]

Michele Bachmann has had her fair share of foreign policy stumbles, but she just hit a whole new level.

According to a tweet from NBC News’ Jamie Novogrod, Bachmann responded to the recent raiding of the British embassy in Iran, by saying that if she was President, she would close down the U.S. embassy there.

There’s just one problem: The U.S. has not had an embassy in Iran ever since the Iranian hostage crisis, when revolutionaries from the budding Islamic state held 52 Americans for 444 days. Indeed, frustration over this helped bring down Bachmann’s bete noire Jimmy Carter by defining his presidency as weak. The two countries have not had official diplomatic relations since that time. Furthermore, President Obama’s short-lived offer of outreach “without preconditions” was a critical part of Republican attacks against his foreign policy.

So, a gaffe it is, and one that’s particularly ironic coming after Bachmann’s recent media push in which she has tried to bill herself as a safe pair of hands, saying, “I haven’t had a gaffe.”
 

[240 is Back]

she should really know things like this.

this isn't ragging on her for little stuff.  This is about whether or not Iran and US are on good terms.  weak.

[240 is Back]

TERRIBLE response from her campaign...


Michele Bachmann's team did a campaign version of a cleanup in aisle 9 tonight, trying to clarify a comment the congresswoman made earlier about how a Bachmann presidency wouldn't allow "an American embassy in Iran."

The comment left some observers scratching their heads, since the United States cut ties with Iran three decades ago.

As the comment took off on Twitter over the last few hours, Bachmann's team put out a statement noting her seat on the House Select Committee on Intelligence - and suggesting she was making a 'hypothetical' based on the developments involving the British embassy in Iran.

She "is fully aware that we do not have an embassy in Iran and have not had one since 1980. She was agreeing with the actions taken by the British to secure their embassy personnel and was speaking in the hypothetical, that if she was President of the United States and if we had an embassy in Iran, she would have taken the same actions as the British," the statement said.

[LurkerNoMore]

By golly, she would just open one then.  So she could close it.  Makes perfect sense.

[OzmO]

God told her to say it.