With Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., retiring from Congress at year's end, the White House Christmas party this week was likely her last chance to speak directly to President Barack Obama over one particularly pressing issue brewing in her mind: bombing Iran.
While at the party, Bachmann took it upon herself to approach the president and offer him some advice on the subject.
She recounted the incident to the Washington Free Beacon:
"I turned to the president and I said, something to the effect of, 'Mr. President, you need to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities, because if you don't, Iran will have a nuclear weapon on your watch and the course of world history will change," said Bachmann, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
"And he got this condescending smile on his face and laughed at me and said, 'Well Michele, it's just not that easy.' And I said to him, 'No, Mr. President, you're the president, it will happen on your watch, and you'll have to answer to the world for this.' And that was it and then I left. Merry Christmas."
According to Bachmann, Iran could procure a nuclear bomb within the next two years, and experts told her it would take about six to eight weeks worth of airstrikes to eliminate the Iranian nuclear program.
Ongoing nuclear talks between Iran and world super powers -- the U.S., Germany, France, the U.K., Russia and China -- have been extended twice so far, and are expected to produce an agreement by February or March, Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday according to The Huffington Post.
Bachmann told the Free Beacon that with military budget cuts, the loss of intelligence from the CIA's tanked interrogation program and the release of Guantanamo Bay prisoners, the next president will have fewer options to deal with Iran and possible terrorist threats.
"If we continue on this trajectory of hollowing out our military capacities, and in my opinion our intelligence capacities ... then we are looking at a very horrific option, because how long does it take then to build back up, to get that capacity to take them out," she said.
"On foreign policy ... you pay for the sins decades into the future."
