Don’t penalize Marines in video

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Updated: February 18, 2012 8:07AM

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is correct in saying we should not be penalizing the Marines for urinating on the bodies of their enemies. I would rather see the Marines do this than take drugs to relieve their frustration. Their enemies have done a lot worse to them in many wars. I remember taking basic training; all I heard, 24/7, was “kill or be killed.” You never forget something like that.

Del Olken, Niles

We’re better than this

In Sunday’s letters column, Brian Flynn of Crestwood claims that because Taliban fighters have desecrated American corpses more grotesquely than the Marines who were videotaped urinating on dead Taliban fighters did, the legal fate that awaits these soldiers is somehow unfair.

This appalling logic is profoundly un-American. Remember: We’re the good guys. We are better than they are. We don’t lower ourselves to do some evil things because our enemies do worse evil things. Only by holding ourselves, and the men and women of our military, to a higher ethical standard than that expressed by our barbaric enemies can we plausibly claim the moral high ground to act on the world stage as we do.

Bill Savage, Rogers Park

No hoodlums at parade

The South Side Irish Parade is back. It’s a shame it got canceled in the first place. We let hoodlums dictate what we can have and not have. OK, they’re not all hoodlums. Some are just ignorant and disrespectful of people and property.

I feel sorry for the Beverly residents who have to put up with it, but what is needed is strict control.

Carl F. Rollberg, Calumet Park

GOP all about the 1 percent

Republicans decry alleged attempts by Democrats to redistribute wealth, presumably downward. What they are blind to is that they have been acting at every opportunity since 1981 to redistribute wealth upward to corporations and to a tiny fraction of the already wealthy at the top.

Mary F. Warren, Wheaton