Fox News commentator Brit Hume argued on Sunday that it was not "despicable" for Marines to urinate on dead Taliban soldiers since the U.S. also kills them with drone strikes.
A video uncovered last week by TMZ, showed U.S. Marines urinating on lifeless bodies who were assumed to be members of the Taliban.
During a discussion about the video Sunday on Fox News, contributor Bill Kristol called the incident "wrong," but slammed the Obama administration for making "a bigger deal out of it than it is."
Host Chris Wallace noted that Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi had called the incident "inhuman and despicable, an unforgivable act."
"Does the Taliban have standing to lecture us on what's despicable?" Wallace asked Juan Williams.
"No, but it doesn't matter," Williams explained. "We shouldn't be abiding by the Taliban's standards. We have our own standards as Americans. Clearly, this was a despicable act."
"Despicable?" Hume interrupted.
"It was despicable to desecrate the dead," Williams replied.
"We eliminate people with drone attacks, kill them," Hume said. "So killing them is fine, it's just when they're dead and not around, if you do something to their body, that's worse?"
"In my judgement, urinating on a dead person is despicable," Williams argued.
"That's just an unfair argument," Democratic analyst Kirsten Powers said, objecting to Hume's point. "And this is the one that conservatives are always dragging out whenever liberals make criticisms of things like this. They're just like, 'Oh, well we kill people so we can do anything to them.' I mean, we do have standards. It is despicable. You can say it's despicable and still say we can kill people in war."
"I agree with that," Hume grumbled. "I just don't think it's despicable."
