Reconsidering Michele Bachmann

The Washington Post reports today that al Qaeda’s successful attack on the Algerian natural gas plant has greatly boosted al Qaeda’s prestige in Africa. Along the way, the Post notes rather casually:

The assailants were well-trained and armed with what appear to have been weapons from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s arsenal.

The overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi has turned out to be a terrible blunder. It has empowered radical Muslims, led directly to the Benghazi debacle, and scattered Gaddafi’s armory among terrorist elements, including al Qaeda. There has been, of course, no accountability for the Libya decision, either with respect to the Obama administration or others outside the administration who supported Obama’s policy.

All of which reminded me of Andy McCarthy’s column in National Review. McCarthy criticizes John McCain for his support of Obama’s failed Libya policy, and contrasts McCain with another Republican who gets less respect as a foreign policy expert:

“. . . Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.”

Read full article HERE.