Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann says the candidates and the media need to pay more careful attention to national security issues as the 2012 campaign unfolds.
“We live in a very dangerous world that’s very volatile. The president of the United States put this country into a fourth war and yet CNN didn’t even bring that up during the course of the debate (last week),” Bachmann said during an interview with Radio Iowa. “This is a serious issue. The president committed 100 special forces troops into part of Africa at the request of Uganda, to go into four different African countries.”
Obama sent the troops to help capture the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a group that has been accused of brutal attacks in central Africa for the past two decades.
In addition, Bachmann contends the country of Iran committed an “act of war” in the recently thwarted plot to hire Mexican drug runners to kill Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador in Washington, D.C.
“These are very serious issues,” Bachmann said, “…and clearly this is something that we need to pay attention to.”
Bachmann faults the Obama Administration for failing to reach a deal with Iraqi leaders to keep some American troops in Iraq.
“The real issue here is that Iran is a very aggressive nation and the president has put up no barriers to Iran having undue influence in Iraq and this is a very serious issue,” Bachmann said. “And it shows the president has completely failed the American people on foreign policy.”
Bachmann has been touting her membership on the House Intelligence Committee to voters as a way to bolster her foreign policy credentials. Rival Herman Cain, by comparison, has surged in the polls while stumbling on some foreign policy questions, like whether a U.S. president should negotiate with terrorists for the release of U.S. hostages.
Shifting to campaign tactics, Bachmann has asked the man who managed Mike Huckabee’s successful 2008 Iowa Caucus campaign to lead her Iowa team. Eric Woolson had worked on former presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 campaign and Woolson had recently been helping Bachmann’s campaign with communications and logistics. He’s now Bachmann’s Iowa campaign manager.
Bachmann is scheduled to campaign in Davenport and Muscatine Friday afternoon, with a stop in Burlington Friday evening. On Saturday, Bachmann has stops scheduled in Fairfield, Ottumwa and Oskaloosa. On Sunday, she’s scheduled to speak at a church in Marion.