Rick Santorum: Africa 'Was A Country On The Brink' (VIDEO)

Santorum Talks About 'Country' Of Africa

Zeroing out foreign aid, former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum said at Tuesday's debate, "is absolutely the wrong course." He cited development money that went to fight the AIDS pandemic in Africa: "It was a country on the brink," he said, adding that it was a ripe region for radical Islamists.

Africa, of course, is a continent, not a country. And we've heard this mistake before.

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Santorum's primary rival, also made a geographical mix-up about Africa at an earlier debate, saying "Now with the president, he put us in Libya. He is now putting us in Africa. We already were stretched too thin, and he put our special operations forces in Africa."

Libya is, of course, part of the continent of Africa.

More on Santorum's comments, from HuffPost's Andrea Stone:

Santorum [noted] that the continent was a "fertile ground" where radical Islamists could "get a foothold" -- even though they already have one in the Horn of Africa. He rejected those who "talk of zeroing out foreign aid" and said that such aid "promotes our values that America is that shining city on the hill."

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