While discussing whether or not the United States should be cutting aid to Israel during the CNN, Las Vegas GOP debate, Michele Bachmann was adamant in her defense of continuing to send Israel money, but she didn't share that same sentiment when it came to our occupation of Iraq or intervention in Libya.
COOPER: Time. Congresswoman Bachmann... [...] Should we cut foreign aid to Israel?
BACHMANN: No, we should not be cutting foreign aid to Israel. Israel is our greatest ally. The biggest problem is the fact... that the president -- the biggest problem with this administration in foreign policy is that President Obama is the first president since Israel declared her sovereignty put daylight between the United States and Israel. That heavily contributed to the current hostilities that we see in the Middle East region.
Cutting back on foreign aid is one thing. Being reimbursed by nations that we have liberated is another. We should look to Iraq and Libya to reimburse us for part of what we have done to liberate these nations.
Now, I need to add something on this issue of negotiating for hostages. This is a very serious issue. For any candidate to say that they would release the prisoners at Guantanamo in exchange for a hostage would be absolutely contrary to the historical nature of the United States and what we do in our policy. That's naive; we cannot do that. The United States has done well because we have an absolute policy: We don't negotiate.
After which she was roundly debunked by Ron Paul on that whole "we don't negotiate for hostages" issue.
It seems Bachmann was parroting her friend from Fox, Sean Hannity, with her remarks about Iraq -- Hannity's 'little idea': 'The Iraqis ... need to pay us back for their liberation. Every single solitary penny' . As Dave noted in his post:
Yeah, I bet the families of the estimated 100,000-plus innocent civilians who we "liberated" from their existence on the planet would be more than happy to "pay us back."
Especially considering that no one in Iraq asked for us to liberate them -- we just did it on our own, illegally and under false pretenses.
Slightly earlier in the debate, Bachmann also said this:
COOPER: So defense spending would be on the table, should be?
BACHMANN: Defense spending is on the table, but again, Anderson, now with the president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa. We already were stretched too thin, and he put our Special Operations Forces in Africa.
Note to Michele Bachmann:
ADD: (Nicole) While the main point of this post is the lovely bit of idiocy that Bachmann thinks that Iraqis should be so grateful for being invaded and occupied under false pretenses, seen more than four million citizens displaced, over 100,000 civilians dead and the country destroyed that they should be willing to pay us back for our troubles, I can't let this little bit of flaming pile of bovine excrement go unchallenged.
The biggest problem is the fact... that the president -- the biggest problem with this administration in foreign policy is that President Obama is the first president since Israel declared her sovereignty put daylight between the United States and Israel. That heavily contributed to the current hostilities that we see in the Middle East region.
Maybe Bachmann would be surprised to hear that it was not all peace and rainbows in the Middle East region prior to the Obama administration taking office. In fact, I'd say that the hostilities in that region have existed for quite some time--generations even--before Obama set foot in the Oval Office. And if Avigdor Lieberman, Bibi Netanyahu, and Tzipi Livni have no complaints about the relationship they have with Obama, what's Michele's beef? Maybe I'm just too tied to that whole reality sphere.
