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      DAVENPORT, Iowa (AP) - Republican presidential candidate Michele
Bachmann said Friday the Obama administration is striking all
references to Islam from Justice Department training manuals,
exaggerating a directive from federal officials to evaluate
procedures for religious and cultural sensitivity.


      Bachmann, a Minnesota congresswoman and a member of the House
Intelligence Committee, equated the effort to strike offensive
references to Islam from material to removing suspicion of Islamic
terrorism from department policy.


      A conservative popular with tea party activists and evangelical
conservatives, she later linked President Barack Obama with "4,400
American lives" lost in Iraq. However, the death toll in the
8-year-old war that began under President George W. Bush had
already reached 4,229 when Obama was inaugurated in 2009. It now
stands at no fewer than 4,481.


      As she campaigned in Iowa, now the focus of her effort to win
the Republican nomination, Bachmann accused the administration of
making changes in training manuals under pressure from pro-Islam
groups with terrorist links.


      "And now Obama is allowing terror suspect groups to write the
FBI's terror training manual," she told about 75 Republican
activists in an eastern Iowa hotel conference room.


      The FBI has not removed Islam from training material, said an
FBI official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter
and requested anonymity.


      The FBI has been conducting a comprehensive review of its
training materials after it was revealed that what officials termed
an inaccurate description of Islam, one that linked the religion to
terrorism, was being used in some of the bureau's training
programs. Last month, FBI officials said the agency was undertaking
the review in light of an analyst's criticism of Islam during a
lecture last spring.


      Deputy Attorney General James Cole said last week he had asked
that all aspects of the department be broadly re-evaluated for
"sensitivity for all peoples of faith" in its training efforts.


      "Examples include the efforts of our law enforcement components
to ensure that their interactions with the community - whether in
responding to an attack on a mosque or arresting a suspect in a
counter-terrorism investigation - convey a sense of basic respect
to the rule of law and the rights of all who have made this nation
their home," Cole said.


      In her remarks Friday, Bachmann broadly painted the effort as
trying to remove the link between Islam and anti-American terrorism
sponsored by radical Islamic extremists.


      "And so now the White House has scrubbed all Islamic terms from
the national counterterrorism strategy. The White House has removed
all Islamic terms from the Pentagon's report on the Fort Hood
shooting. And now, Obama is allowing terror suspect groups to write
the FBI's terror training manual," she said.


      The White House declined to respond to Bachmann's criticism.


      In an interview with CNN on Friday, Bachmann said Obama's
foreign policies were worse than his economic ones and linked Obama
to the war's overall death toll as well as its cost.


      "Under Barack Obama's watch, we've expended $805 billion to
liberate the people of Iraq and, more importantly, 4,400 American
lives," she said.


      Bachmann is on the first leg of a three-day campaign trip to the
leadoff caucus state.

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Michele Bachmann said Friday the Obama administration is striking all references to Islam from Justice Department training manuals, exaggerating a directive from federal officials to evaluate procedures for religious and cultural sensitivity.

Bachmann exaggerates directive in her criticism

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