Shame on Politico: Article Makes Fake Claim That Michelle Bachmann Wanted A War On Islam

Buried in a report about Michele Bachmann (R-MN) possibly being targeted by ISIS, the "Politico" reporters cherry-picked words from her speech at the Values Voter Summit to falsely claim "Bachmann has been publicly critical of not only ISIL, but also Islam, calling on President Barack Obama to declare war on the religion"

In the article "Michele Bachmann given security detail over ISIL threat," reporters Anna Palmer and Rachael Bade offered the reasons why the Minnesota Republican may have incurred the wrath of ISIS:

Bachmann has been publicly critical of not only ISIL, but also Islam, calling on President Barack Obama to declare war on the religion during a speech at the conservative Value Voters Summit at the end of September.

“And I believe if you have an evil of an order of this magnitude, you take it seriously,” Bachmann said. “You declare war on it, you don’t dance around it. Just like the Islamic State has declared war on the United States of America.”

Bachmann did not call on the President to declare war on Islam during the speech, she called on him to declare war on ISIS. The one time she talked directly about Islam it was in reference to a statement by the President made two weeks earlier that ISIL had nothing to do with Islam. Bachmann's response was that the terrorists' motivation was Islam. It is clear by the video and transcript excerpted below, that at no point of the speech was she asking for a war in Islam:

But one slogan that she [Hillary Clinton] won’t be able to use, al-Qaida is on the run. Remember that one in 2012? As the rise of radical Islamic jihad -- although that’s redundant -- dominates the headlines, we are seeing this enemy as pure evil as they are cutting off the heads of innocent people; that in August buried literally women and children alive. These are Christian brothers and sisters. These are Yazidis tonight -- tonight -- who are on Mount Sinjar and they are continuing to suffer.

I recently got an email from a pastor this week who told me there’s a missionary working with the Yazidis who are barely clinging to life. They’re sleeping in the cold mountains, they don’t have blankets, it’s a whole different world now, and we can’t forget them.

We can’t forget the others who are persecuted around the world just because of their religious beliefs. And why is that? It’s because we have jihadists who are subscribing to this radical ideology that believes that dying in the name of Islam gets them to heaven. This is spiritual warfare, and what we need to do is defeat Islamic jihad.

Sadly, our president has the wrong prescription. He even failed to acknowledge their motivations for bringing about jihad. Yes, Mr. President, it is about Islam. (Cheers, applause.) And I believe that if you have an evil the order of this magnitude, you take it seriously. You declare war on it, you don’t dance around it, just like the Islamic State has declared war on the United States of America. You kill their leader, you kill their council, you kill their army until they wave the white flag of surrender. That’s how you win a war.

And you don’t preemptively take anything off the table. You don’t advance signal your enemy as to what your intention is. The president asked Congress to follow him in a Vietnam-style slow walk response, and I said no because either the United States chooses to decisively defeat this brutal evil with every resource we have or we’re going to have to answer to the next generation why we failed to defeat the totalitarian evil of our day.

"Politico"reporters Palmer and Bade were either too lazy to check the facts or deliberately tried to slander Bachmann. Either way they owe Ms. Bachmann both a retraction and an apology.