Summary: Politico reports that elements within the GOP are concerned that the “bomb-throwing” Rep. Michele Bachmann, Republican of Minnesota, may be inflicting damage on the party’s reputation with her incessant incendiary rhetoric. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on the ninth day after losing his 2008 primary challenge against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman, in line with his focus on national security, reported that the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 turned it into a terrorist training ground for jihadists around the world, with militants converging on Iraq to learn increasingly sophisticated insurgency techniques and then exporting those tactics to other hotspots, including Afghanistan, turning the war against terror “global” in a way not foreseen by the Bush administration.

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Summary: Pentagon spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to fight terrorism elsewhere has reached $685.7 billion since 2001, according to a U.S. government watchdog agency. The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, said the Iraq war accounted for $533.5 billion in Defense Department spending obligations through December 2008, while spending on operations in Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, and the Philippines totaled $124.1 billion. The remaining $28.1 billion was for operations to defend the U.S. mainland, the GAO said in a letter to Congress dated March 30, 2009.

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Summary: Iranian demonstrators, waving Palestinian flags and chanting “Death to Obama,” burned photographs of Barack Obama in Tehran as they protested against America’s inaction over Israel’s Gaza offensive. Iranian demonstrators have often burned effigies or pictures of U.S. presidents, but this appeared to be the first time Obama’s picture had been defaced, a week before his inauguration as president.

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