Joshua Keating has a brief summary of the foreign policy views of likely and declared 2012 Republican candidates, and it’s mostly fine for what it is, but there were several mistakes and misleading statements that jumped out at me.

He takes what he thinks is an easy swipe at Bachmann for identifying possible elements of Al Qaeda and Hizbullah among Libyan rebels, and says that this echoes Gaddafi’s talking points, but in fact Bachmann took this information from Admiral Stavridis, who testified before Congress that intelligence indicated there were “flickers” of these groups in eastern Libya. Maybe that was wrong, or maybe it wasn’t, but it’s simply inaccurate to say that Bachmann was echoing Gaddafi. She may have been exaggerating the significance of what Adm. Stavridis said, but that’s very different from repeating Gaddafi’s propaganda.

On Palin, Keating says, “She has been an outspoken opponent of U.S. involvement in Libya.” He fails to mention that her opposition to involvement in Libya was largely incoherent rambling and she didn’t clearly oppose the intervention prior to her speech last week. Indeed, until her split with her neoconservative advisors, which Keating mentions, one would have been hard-pressed to describe Palin as an opponent of the Libyan intervention.

The last error is not terribly important, but it was odd. Keating wrongly identifies Ron Paul as an Arizona Congressman. This is a strange mistake considering how relatively well-known Paul is by now. Ron Paul represents the Fourteenth District of Texas.