Durbin is my senator, and of late I’ve been proud as hell to have voted for him. This is a version of a comment (and later, a diary) I posted over at DKos about Durbin’s Guantanamo statement. I don’t usually think so well of my stuff that I sprinkle it all over blog creation, but it’s really sad and maddening to watch even the Dems and liberals let the nutwing once again set the agenda. Durbin did NOT compare Guantanamo to the Nazi deathcamps or anything else. He raised a question.
Here’s what Durbin said following the FBI-generated description: “If I read this to you [without telling you what it was about], you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
He is not making an analogy. He is not making a comparison. He read a description by an FBI agent that’s similar to descriptions by other US law enforcers as well as groups like the Red Cross, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and similar unAmerican groups.He’s saying, if you heard this out of context, what regime would you think is being described? He’s saying, I’d probably think of Hitler, Stalin, etc, and I think most other people would, too. Durbin goes on to point out that when people around the world DO react that way, the conduct of this war and this behavior damage US credibility and endanger Americans abroad, military and nonmilitary alike.
The answer to the nutwing is, OK, who would YOU think of? Jesus? The Red Cross? Mother Teresa? Or would you think of the usual suspects? Everybody knows that the real answer is pretty much the ones Durbin suggested, and that any other answer by the nutwing is a lie.
When they claim that Durbin is “hurting the troops” blablabla, point out that it was the FBI, not Durbin, who wrote the description of what really went on on Bush’s watch. If they want to attack the FBI for telling the truth, fine.
Durbin said people would expect this kind of behavior from Nazis, etc. In other words, that it’s not what they’d expect from the USA. The nutwing is saying everybody should know it WAS the USA, and not Hitler or Stalin, but GW Bush. So who’s the unAmerican here, again? Could it be….Brit and Ann and Wallace and Rush?
Durbin hit a home run for us, and we’re screwing around with nutwing bullshit instead of running the bases. Reality and reading skills are our friends and their enemies. So why the hell ain’t we using them?
And now to the poll. Here is the FBI agent report that Durbin quoted:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and
foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated
or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one
occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so
cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold….On another
occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the
unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the
floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out
throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot,
but extremely loud [pop] music was being played in the room, and had been since the day
before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
Imagine you know nothing about the context, who said it, nothing. It’s just a thing you heard on the radio.
