The latest blunder, as I'm sure you've heard by now if you've been paying attention to the news or the blogosphere, is Illinois Senator Dick Durbin's idiotic statement likening U.S. interrogation tactics to the Nazis and the Soviets. Here's his statement after reading an example of the conditions in Guantanamo Bay:
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.
It he would have described murders, mutilation, gassings, or something of that sort, I think most people would have understood the reference. However, he talked about detainees who were left in interrogation rooms on the floor while the air conditioners were either on full blast or were cut off altogether, and loud music was played to keep them awake. None of that comes CLOSE to the horrors described by the survivors or witnesses of concentration camps or gulags, especially when these regimes are some of the biggest mass murderers in history.
Nevertheless, I was content to let this comment slide. After all, Ted Kennedy made a similar idiotic comment after the Abu Gharib photos became public, and I was pretty sure that condemnation would come and Democrats would sort of back away from Durbin a bit. However, none have, and the left-wing bloggers in the blogosphere have also come to the defense of Durbin.
If left-wing bloggers want to know why they don't have more influence in the media (especially after how they spurned their cries for more coverage of the Downing Street Memo) then this might help:
And let's not forget, "torture" was used as a rationale for this war -- as in, we'll invade and end the torture.
Of course, none of that has happened. The torture that was so bad under Saddam, is equally bad under U.S. command. And Dick Durbin had the balls to say it so on the Senate floor.
Even if we are to take Kos's explanation for face value - he says it wasn't saying the amount of torture was equally bad, only the fact that torture is being used - it's statements like these that show the fallacy of leftist thinking. You can't simply make an equation by looking at the surface of the two things you are comparing. There are other underlying factors and objectives behind these activities that need to be discussed first.
To claim interrogation tactics that could possibly divulge information which would save the lives of our soldiers in their struggle to secure Iraq is as equally bad as the countless murders Saddam and the Bathist regime committed makes no sense whatsoever. Saddam tortured and killed political opponents, and jailed any and everyone that provided the least bit of resistance to his policies or to his henchmen. For the most part, most of these people were sentenced to death and torture because Saddam could do it and nobody could stop them.
In these prisons there is a chain of command, and detainees are reviewed and over 200 of them have been released and sent back to their respective countries. Over 130 have been punished for treatment that was against military regulations. I wonder how many times the Bathist government punished Republican Guard officers for mistreating prisoners?
Luckily, media outlets are not falling for this viewpoint, and are criticizing Durban. In fact, the Boston Herald called for Durban's resignation. Hopefully others will see Durban's comments for what they really are and call for him to either apologize fully (and not this joke of an apology either) or resign.
