So, she was only talking hypothetically. When Michelle Bachmann, Republican Party candidate and Minnesota Congresswoman, suggested that in the wake of Britain's withdrawal of embassy staff from Tehran, she would do "exactly" the same if she were president, reporters had simply got the wrong end of the stick.

Well, here's what she originally said:

That's exactly what I would do (if I were president). We wouldn't have an embassy in Iran. I wouldn't allow that to be there.

The US hasn't had an embassy in Tehran since 1980 when it severed relations during the hostage crisis. Bachmann should have known that -- and later her people claimed she did.

Yesterday evening, her staff issued a statement to suggest that her comments had been (yes) "taken out of context". It stated that Bachmann:

is fully aware that we do not have an embassy in Iran and have not had one since 1980. She was agreeing with the actions taken by the British to secure their embassy personnel and was speaking in the hypothetical, that if she was President of the United States and if we had an embassy in Iran, she would have taken the same actions as the British.

Politico described the attempt to regain foreign policy credibility as "a campaign version of a cleanup in aisle 9" but it would appear to be another example of a Republican candidate wrestling with foreign affairs and losing -- by three falls and a submission.

Last month Herman Cain struggled to recall the details of the Libya conflict ("Got all this stuff twirling around in my head") and in an exchange on 1 November -- with clear echoes of Bachmann's error -- Cain also appeared to be unaware that China has been a nuclear power since the 1960s. In a PBS Newshour interview, Cain said of China:

So yes they're a military threat. They've indicated that they're trying to develop nuclear capability and they want to develop more aircraft carriers like we have. So yes, we have to consider them a military threat.

Now Cain is expected to make a major announcement which may see him exit the race -- not for his foreign policy slips, of course, but for stories surrounding his complicated personal life. "I am reassessing because of all this media firestorm stuff," he's quoted as saying.