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Rick Perry defends Marines caught urinating on Taliban corpses in video
Texas Governor Rick Perry, scrambling to keep his U.S. presidential bid alive, accused the Obama administration on Sunday of over-reacting to a videotape that shows four Marines appearing to urinate on dead Taliban fighters in Afghanistan.
“These kids made a mistake. There’s not any doubt about it. They shouldn’t have done it. It’s bad,” Perry told CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
“But to call it a criminal act, I think, is over the top,” said Perry, who faces a possible make-or-break performance in the South Carolina Republican presidential primary on Saturday. (Photos: Reuters)
Gary Clement’s Week in Review for Jan. 8 to 14, 2012
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Video of Marines urinating on dead insurgents won’t harm peace talks: Taliban
A video showing what appear to be American forces urinating on dead Taliban fighters prompted anger in Afghanistan and promises of a U.S. investigation on Thursday, but the insurgent group said it would not harm nascent efforts to broker peace talks.
The video, posted on YouTube and other websites, shows four men in camouflage Marine combat uniforms urinating on three corpses. One of them jokes: “Have a nice day, buddy.” Another makes a lewd joke.
It is likely to stir up already strong anti-U.S. sentiment in Afghanistan after a decade of a war that has seen other cases of abuse, and that could complicate efforts to promote reconciliation as foreign troops gradually withdraw.
Graphic: Mapping a superpower-sized military
Despite the pending troop withdrawals in Iraq and those in Afghanistan between now and 2014, the United States remains a superpower on a scale not seen since the days of the Caesars. With this in mind, the National Post’s Richard Johnson takes a look at the scale of America’s forces.
Wounded warriors: Life will never be the same
In remarkably candid interviews from a veterans hospital in Richmond, Virginia, three U.S. Marines tell National Post graphics editor and illustrator Richard Johnson about coming under fire in Afghanistan, and the long road to recovery.
Lance-Corporal Huffman considers himself lucky. Sitting in a wheelchair at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Va., the 22-year-old believes being paralysed by a Taliban bullet is a lot better than the alternative. “So being paralyzed doesn’t bother me at all. There is nothing I can do about it so there is no reason to be down about it and be all depressed. If I never walk again — oh well,” he says in a room at the hospital where most days he is visited by his wife, Mauricia Maria Ramirez, 24, and their 18-month-old son, Matthew.
Wounded warriors: Life will never be the same
In remarkably candid interviews from a veterans hospital in Richmond, Virginia, three U.S. Marines tell National Post graphics editor and illustrator Richard Johnson about coming under fire in Afghanistan, and the long road to recovery.
“Interaction with Afghans was pretty often, but you hate them — the people know who the Taliban are, but because they fear them so much they don’t say anything. I have been shot at multiple times and every time I never saw anybody and the villagers said they didn’t see anybody either. They do nothing but lie.”
