Rick Perry - the Abu Ghraib candidate

Despite being a sideshow to the main event in November, in the age of the 24 hour news cycle, the Republican primary has proved ominous and entertaining in equal measure. Many on the left would love to see one of the zanier candidates face-off against Barack Obama as it would make the president home-and-hosed for a second term. He hasn’t been a great or even near-great chief executive (partially hindered by an obstructive opposition in Congress and the habitual Democrat trait of failing to get their act together), but he has been middle-of-the-road and that could rise to above-average with a major foreign policy success between 2013-2017 (Congress would torpedo any domestic reform).


The most likely challenger Mitt Romney would probably be the most acceptable Republican president since Eisenhower if he did win but he has none of Ike’s charms (or war record). Newt Gingrich may mock Mitt for uttering French (despite two years in Paris, saying Bonjour, je m’appelle hardly qualifies one as fluent) – criticising an ability to possess a foreign tongue is one of the more laughable critiques from the right of the GOP, including the lambasting of Chinese-speaker Jon Huntsman as the Manchurian Candidate – thus making him comparable to John Kerry, but the Romney/Kerry flip has some mileage. Both were seen as solid yet lacklustre candidates by their respective parties, doing nothing to energise the grassroots, with only desperation at the current incumbent driving people to vote for them. Kerry lost narrowly, Ohio reaffirming its status as the bellwether state. What are the odds for a repeat, with Romney being the fall guy?

Rick Perry seems a few bricks short of a shithouse and was busy vindicating that yesterday when he said that the marines captured peeing on dead Afghans shouldn’t be prosecuted, merely reprimanded. He doesn’t understand that like the (false) reports that Korans were burned in Guantanamo Bay, this can inflame passions and, As John McCain said, damage the war effort. Specifically, it puts American troops in more danger. To compound the damage of his words, he said it on CNN, with its enormous reach throughout the world. Excusing the bastards who had such contempt for the fallen, he went on “Obviously, 18 and 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that's what's occurred here.” Taking dad’s car and pranging it is making a stupid mistake and which happens all too often through the teenage demographic. Urinating on people you have just killed is more than that – what’s occurred here is a war crime. It is against the Geneva Convention to desecrate the dead but Perry would probably dismiss as foreign meddling in American affairs from a limp-wristed, Francophone zone (if he knew where to find it on a map). Did he defend the Somalis who dragged dead Americans through the streets of Mogadishu in 1993 as 18 and 19-year-old kids making a common, stupid mistake? Perry has already declared that homosexuals serving openly in the US Army have damaged the institution but it is actually everything he says that does. It is not the Obama administration with the “disdain for the military.” It is he and thankfully, according to current polling, he is going to be pissed upon this Saturday.