US Soldiers No Different from Nazis?

This makes my blood boil.

From James Taranto, here’s an excerpt from the Congressional Record given my Senator Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat.

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]–I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] Record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

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 rap 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.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, 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.

Be very sure of what you read here. Dick Durbin, a US Senator, just compared our soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Communist butchers, and the man who killed millions in Cambodia.

Watch carefully who defends his statements and who criticizes then (and the qualifiers they use when they do). Watch them and remember what they’re defending.

Do you know any soldiers? This Senator – one of your elected officials – just compared them to three of the most amoral and muderous regimes that have ever existed.

Remember that next time Senator Durbin, or any member of his party, tells us how they support the troops or cry when someone questions their patriotism.

I’ll tell you this right now – and you can quote me on it tomorrow or in a hundred years. If any American compares our soldiers to those who committed mass slaughter, they are unpatriotic. Period.

Dick Durbin ought to be ashamed to call himself an American right now. No American who had any desire to see this country strong and great would have made this accusation.

I’m afraid that he, like so many other Democrats, have fully fallen over the edge and value their political status more highly than they do their citizenship and their duty to our country. He needs to be denounced in the strongest terms possible and shamed into a public apology.

Nothing less that that ought to be acceptable.

UPDATE: Senator Durbin is staunchly unapologetic.

Durbin did not plan to apologize for the comments, spokesman Joe Shoemaker said.

“This administration should apologize to the American people for abandoning the Geneva Conventions and authorizing torture techniques that put our troops at risk and make Americans less secure,” Durbin said in a statement Wednesday evening.

This man needs to be called out by more than just the Illinois Republican Party. He needs to be denounced by every single member of the Senate, every single member of the House, and the President himself. This needs to happen publicly where everyone can see it.

Dick Durbin needs to be shamed and it needs to happen right now.

UPDATE 2: White House Spokesman Scott McClellan and Senator John Warner both jumped into Durbin today.

Still no word in the news from any Democrats. My guess is that when you do hear someone comment on it, they’re going to use a word like “unfortunate” as if he accidentally slandered our troops and the entire country.

The President hasn’t weighed in on this yet and he needs to. He needs to come down hard and be unequivocal with his comments. He needs to make it very clear that there is a bright line between criticizing his policies and irresponsibility and that Durbin stepped well over that line.

Michelle Malkin has a great roundup of comments on this story (but not mine, so come here for updates, then go there for the rest of the blogosphere) and also includes Durbin’s office number. I suggest it get some serious use.

You kow, the more I thnk about this, the angrier I get. Take a look at part of his “explanation” of his comments, from Hugh Hewitt:

I have heard my colleagues and others in the press suggest that I have said our soldiers could be compared to Nazis. I’d say to the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I do not even know if the interrogator involved here was an American soldier. I didn’t say that at any point. To suggest that I am criticizing American servicemen, I am not. I don’t know who is responsible for this. But the FBI agent made this report, and to suggest that I was attributing all the sins and all the horro and barbarism of Nazi Germany or Soviet Republic or Pol Pot to Americans is totally unfair. I was attributing this form of interrogation to repressive regimes, such as those that I noted.

That, folks, is an outright lie – a lie that very quickly was picked up by Kos and given a few dishonest spins. But let’s review Durbin’s comments and see just what he said. Remember that he read from an FBI report, then asked us a question.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, 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.

Okay, so he’s led you from this report at Gitmo directly to genocide. Who committed these act that he says you would “most certainly” believe was committed by these regimes?

Americans.

This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Durbin says he did not compare American soldiers to Nazis, Soviet gulag-masters, and Pol Pot. He says, with a straight face and without fear of being immediately struck dead for such a brazen statement, that he can’t say who did this. Maybe soldiers did it or maybe not. Maybe it was…aliens! Aliens from the planet Zombo! Or maybe it was the 1978 Denver Broncos? You know, I never trusted that Lyle Alzado anyhow.

Kos says that Durbin says saying that such treatment is “more at home in a place like Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany than in a modern Democracy”. But you can read English as well as I can. That’s clearly not what he’s saying. I’m not going to parse the comments to that degree. I’ll leave that niggling to his apologists who have problems enough stretching the word “torture” to include loud music and not cleaning up a detainees feces when he’s soiled himself.

The simple, unalterable truth here is this. You’re going to have to look a long time before you find a more craven and blatantly dishonest statement than this faux apology from Senator Durbin. He’s not only unpatriotic and a slanderer, he’s also an bold-faced liar.

I don’t want Durbin to be censured. Censure is too light. I want him to resign. If the Democrats ever want to claim again that they care one whit for our soldiers or our country, they’ll demand that he step down. If not, I’ll personally make sure that they will never get the monkey of Durbin’s lies off of their backs.

Never.