Bachmania

Last weekend’s Ames Straw Poll gave Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann credibility among the mainstream media that she is a serious candidate for the White House next year. Immediately following the Straw Poll, Bachmann was on all five Sunday morning talk shows to discuss her presidency. She’s been called a Tea Party favorite. However, her rhetoric is generally not being put under scrutiny.

In a speech last fall, she spoke of Iran as a Very Serious Nuclear Threat and also gives support to the People’s Mujahideen of Iran, also known as the Mujahideen e Khalq.

Please watch:

Her first point, that Iran is a nuclear threat, is completely false. During the August 11th GOP presidential debate it was assumed as given by all presidential candidates (save Ron Paul) that Iran is a nuclear threat. Yet this claim does not hold up to scrutiny, as Scott Horton pointed out last year. The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to verify that the Iranians are not diverting nuclear materials from peaceful purposes. Despite recent attempts to change the National Intelligence Estimate, there is still no evidence that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. In other words, the idea that America needs to be fearful of a nuclear-armed Iran is without merit.

Her second point, that America should de-list the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK) from the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations, is also suspect. To begin, MEK has been spending big money trying to change the opinion of American politicians on its checkered history. The group, which has been described as a Stalinist cult, has a past of killing Americans and working for the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. Supporting MEK would be a horrible move for America, and Bachmann’s support for that organization must be questioned.

But considering that she openly supports a terrorist organization which has a past of targeting and killing Americans, it’s odd that she also supported the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act as a “Tea Party” Republican. Her support of the MEK shows a disconnect that is often found in American foreign policy, similar to the American support for the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet Union, where Americans support people whose objectives are suspect for short-term gain only for those “gains” to be reversed in the future as those supported become the new enemy.

Of course it isn’t enough for Bachmann to support a terrorist cult, but she actually has to create fake enemies for the United States while ignoring the threats she supports creating. This past week Bachmann claimed that the US needs to be afraid of a resurgent Soviet Union.

Her support of the PATRIOT Act and lip service to war propaganda aren’t the only questionable aspect of her Tea Party credentials. She spent several years working for the IRS as a tax litigator. Apparently God, through her husband, told her to become a tax attorney. I’m no theologian, but this support for the state seems highly suspect. Bachmann has more recently claimed that she wanted to defeat the IRS by working for them and getting to know the system, however coworkers claim she didn’t work much at all while at the IRS due to inexperience as well as spending a good portion of her time on maternity leave.

Michele Bachmann’s sincerity as a conservative is just as questionable as Rick Perry’s. She has demonstrated herself as a war propagandist and terrorist sympathizer while pretending to be a “Tea Party” small government Republican. Her record needs to be scrutinized far more harshly than it currently is now.