Another week, another Republican bites the dust.  This time around it is Jon Huntsman, the Republican who dared believe in science.  The former ambassador to China said:  “I put my faith and trust in science. So you have 99 of 100 climate scientists who  have come out and talked about climate change in certain terms, what is responsible for it. I tend to say this is a discussion that should not be in the political lane but should be in the scientific lane.”  So-yeah--he could never get the Republican nod after that.  Republicans don't believe in science.  Heck, even Republican science teachers don't believe in science.

Huntsman's such a non-issue, I don't think I'll spend any more time on him. I want to talk about another candidate--Rick Perry--and his reaction to the news that American marines urinated on enemy corpses.  The White House and Pentagon (naturally) were furious when they saw the video, which was posted on youtube--and they had a right to be.  Defense secretary Leon Panetta said their behavior was "utterly deplorable" and the offenders would be punished. Timothy Kudo, a former marine captain who served in Helmand, was quoted in The Sunday Times saying: "For me the affront is personal. In a 42-second video, these marines undid everything that my unit spent seven months working to accomplish."

By the way, desecrating corpses is against the Geneva Convention.  And it's disgusting.

Rick Perry, who served in the air force, called the offenders "kids" and said it was "just a mistake."  Okay . . .  umm . . .  maybe.  But then he went further and lost all apparent touch with reality.  First he compared giving golden showers to corpses to  a picture of Army General George Patton urinating in the Rhine River in Germany near the end of World War Two. He then added that “Although there’s not a picture,” British Prime Minister Winston “Churchill did the same thing on the Siegfried line.” The obvious difference is that Patton and Churchill were not pissing on the corpses of dead German soldiers--but maybe that's just me.

He then went on to say that the truly deplorable behavior is that of the Taliban, who videoed the beheading of Daniel Pearl and committed scores of other atrocities.  I agree.  However, what Perry seems to be missing is that they are BOTH deplorable acts and shouldn't the United States strive to be better than the Taliban??  Actually, that's what a lot of people tend to miss.  We--the United States--need to behave better than our terrorist opponents because we ARE better.  Rick Perry doesn't get it--but then he doesn't get a lot of things. 

Those "kids" need to be court martialed for their "mistake"--no doubt about it.