Evisceration, Asylum Style

Sen. Richard "Dick" Durbin equated this nation to some of the most evil regimes on the floor of the Senate. Not only am I personally insulted by these statements, but these statements slander our troops—both past and present—and they are intellectually dishonest. America is not Nazi Germany. It is not Soviet Russia. And it most assuredly is not the killing fields of Cambodia.

What Durbin refers to as torture is preposterous. I am sure that the Jews and Christians murdered by Hitler would have welcomed such treatment as opposed to being starved and gassed. Those people in Stalin’s real gulags probably prayed for such treatment as opposed to being a slave labor force. The detainees down in Gitmo have been treated far better than anything I would have prescribed.

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat has compared the U.S. military's treatment of a suspected al Qaeda terrorist at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay with the regimes of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin and Pol Pot, three of history's most heinous dictators, whose regimes killed millions.

In a speech on the Senate floor late Tuesday, Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, castigated the American military's actions by reading an e-mail from an FBI agent.

He may be free from prosecution with his slanderous comments, because they were made on the floor of the Senate, but he is not free from the controlled anger from people in Illinois, and from average Americans. People are calling for Durbin to apologize. I do not want an apology. This man means what he says. An apology means nothing because he does not believe that what he said was wrong. He thinks that he is not "over the top" or "beyond the pale". This is how he and his extremist cronies think. This is what they believe.

The agent complained to higher-ups that one al Qaeda suspect was chained to the floor, kept in an extremely cold air-conditioned cell and forced to hear loud rap music. The Justice Department is investigating.

Give me a break. This is torture? I suppose what our POWs in Vietnam went through was tea and crumpets compared to this. This is pathetic that people are complaining about this sort of treatment. There is nothing wrong with this treatment. We are not shoving bamboo shoots up their fingernails. We are not beating them, or starving them, or forcing them into slave labor.

About 9 million persons, including 6 million Jews, died in Hitler's death camps, 2.7 million persons died in Stalin's gulags and 1.7 million Cambodians died in Pol Pot's scourge of his country.

Clarification: Hitler’s total death toll was close to 20 million, and it included ethnicities deemed inferior, Jews, Christians, and "social agitators". More than 2.7 million died in Stalin’s gulags. (Closer to 10 million, in addition to the other thirty million he murdered.) Finally, in a country of just over five million, Pol Pot had close to three million people killed. Statistics are nice, but they should be true when reported. So, yes, I chastise the Washington Times for screwing up the numbers.

No prisoners have died at Guantanamo, and the Pentagon has acknowledged five instances of abuse or irreverent handling of the Koran, the holy book of Muslims.

Abuse? Improper handling of a Koran? Oh, Heaven forbid. I am so sick of this garbage. These detainess barely register as "human" on my radar screen. They deserve no respect whatsoever. They are illegal combatants under the rules of the Geneva Convention. For those on the Left out there, that means we could have legally shot them on the battlefield. NONE of these people have ANY protections under the Geneva Convention, and despite the activist judges in this country (that cannot interpret the Constitution properly to save their butts) these people should have no access at all to our judicial system. No trials. No lawyers. Nothing other than a military tribunal should be awaiting them.

Korans, prayer rugs, little caps, arrows pointing towards Mecca, loudspeakers announcing prayer times, culturally-acceptable meals served...Yes, this is torture. They have been treated better than ever before, and every possible step has been taken so as not to offend these people. Nice to see that the wussies in Congress have "wussified" how we conduct the operations in this war.

After reading the e-mail, Mr. Durbin said, "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."

GOOD! I hope that we get a little rougher with these animals.

Mr. Durbin also likened the treatment of terror suspects at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's decision to authorize the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

"It took us almost 40 years for us to acknowledge that we were wrong, to admit that these people should never have been imprisoned. It was a shameful period in American history," Mr. Durbin said. "I believe the torture techniques that have been used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and other places fall into that same category."

Sen. Durbin, I have never served in the military, but I have done research on the interrogation techniques utilized by US intelligence groups and agencies. They take all necessary steps to avoid coming anywhere near the idea of "torture". Why? Because this is America, not the Soviet Union. Psychological and physical techniques used are working. The detainees down in Gitmo are giving us information. Anyone remember the number three man of al-Qaeda caught about a month ago? We used information from the theater of combat, in tune with information we received from these detainees, to catch the slippery little bastard.

The White House yesterday reacted angrily to Mr. Durbin's remarks.

"It's reprehensible, as Defense Secretary [Donald H.] Rumsfeld said, to suggest that the Guantanamo Bay facility is anything like a gulag or a mad regime or Pol Pot," White House spokesman Trent Duffy told The Washington Times.

"It is reprehensible, has no place in the current debate, and as we've seen over several years, the detainees in Guantanamo Bay are being treated humanely," he said.

"What this is is a disservice to any man and woman serving in the U.S. military who's putting their life on the line each day, because they're trying to paint all military with a broad brush because of the actions of perhaps a few bad apples, who are being punished severely."

Aside from the questionable "bad apples" from Abu Ghraib, can anyone cite another instance? Anyone? Every other soldier that has been brought up on charges in this war has walked. The allegations, accusations, and assertions made by others have been patently false, and proven as such. And I am happy that the White House is firing back. It is about time. I was beginning to think Sen. Frist was running the show in the White House, too.

At the Pentagon, Rumsfeld spokesman Larry Di Rita said of Mr. Durbin's remarks: "I didn't hear what he said, but any such comparison would obviously be outrageous and not remotely connected with reality."

LOL. There is the key to this whole issue. These accusations are not connected with reality, just like Sen. Durbin and the rest of the loony Left in the Senate. There is absolutely no connection to what we exist in—as reality—when it comes to how the Left assails this administration, our war effort, and the troops.

Yes, I said the troops. Anyone on the Left—more appropriately, those in power—that state they stand for the troops is a liar. As Thomas would say, "They’re blowing bravo-sierra up everyone’s skirt." The Left despises the military. They do not like the troops. They wished that we would have just turned everything over to their precious United Nations. Talk about a "SNAFU" situation from Hell. If we had done that, the Taliban would still be running the show in Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, and as the UN did in the early eighties, they would have welcomed Osama bin Laden the way they welcomed Yassir Arafat. Thanks for the advice, kids, now go back to the sandbox, please. You children should be seen and never heard.

Mr. Durbin did not back off his characterization in a statement to The Times last night.

"No one, including the White House, can deny the statement I read on the Senate floor was made by an FBI agent describing the torture of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay," he said. "That torture was reprehensible and totally inconsistent with the values we hold dear in America.

((Picking up baseball bat, and heading for Sen. Durbin’s glass house)) Senator, am I "no one"? Is America "no one"? You have really angered a lot of people around this nation. I am surprised your constituents in Illinois have not marched on your office with torches and pitch-forks. What the FBI agent witnessed was anything but torture. (I am wondering if he is a holdover from the touchy-feely days of the Clinton administration.)

Again, senator, there was no torture. It was not "reprehensible" or "totally inconsistent" with anything about America. We have ALWAYS treated POWs (which these people are not) humanely and properly. We have always abided by the rules of war. For the love of God, we follow the "civilized" rules of warfare better than any nation on the face of the Earth.

"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."

DUMBASS! We have not abandoned anything from the Geneva Convention. Senator, let me cite for you the Geneva Convention.

4.1.1 Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict and members of militias of such armed forces

4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill the following conditions:

--that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;

--that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (although this is not required under Protocol I);

--that of carrying arms openly;

--that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Senator, there is your definition of a prisoner of war. These animals at Gitmo DO NOT fall under these guidelines. The US has abided by the Geneva Convention—to the letter—in regard to real POWs. These people in Gitmo are unlawful combatants, and have no protections at all under the Convention. Even the UN recently (I believe last year) stated that terrorists have no protections under the Convention.

U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the Guantanamo prison, is conducting an investigation of complaints from al Qaeda detainees. The Justice Department is investigating complaints from FBI agents who visited the prison.
Mr. Rumsfeld in December 2002 approved a list of tougher interrogation tactics for Guantanamo that officials thought fell short of torture.

These "new" tactics do not even come close to the idea of torture. "Torture" is defined by Merriam-Webster’s Ninth Collegiate Dictionary as: "1: To cause intense suffering: TORMENT 2: To punish or coerce by inflicting excruciating pain." (Copyright: 1983)

These tactics are not torture. They are coercive, yes, but they do not inflict pain. And if people now coming to Durbin’s side that claim these detainees are hard to break, I would hardly call "loud rap music", or hot and cold environments as torment. (In Arizona today, it is supposed to get up to 110; am I torturing myself if the AC in my apartment is lowered to fifty-five degrees? Hmmm?)

Some were used on Mohammed al-Qahtani, a would-be hijacker in the September 11 attacks who provided important information on Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, the Pentagon says.

Mr. Rumsfeld rescinded much of his interrogation order a month later after some government lawyers expressed doubts about the tactics' effectiveness.

If these tactics are not working as we had hoped (Lord knows why we would hope that "coddling" our enemy would work) then it is time to reexamine the tactics, and make them more effective.

President Bush decided not to grant terror suspects prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions. Instead, the administration designated them illegal enemy combatants, but said they would be treated in accordance with Geneva rules. Each prisoner has received a review from a prison board, while federal courts sort out their rights under U.S. law.

If I may interject, these people have no rights under US law. The only people that should have ANY rights under our laws are US citizens caught in the service of the enemy. And even then, there are questions as to whether or not they still have the protections that their citizenship would grant them. To be on the side of the enemy, against this nation during a time of war, is treason, plain and simple.

In using such stark language Tuesday night, Mr. Durbin was repeating a theme that the political left has used in recent months: making "torture" the defining issue in how Mr. Bush is waging the war against Islamic terrorism.

No, we do not use torture. Our enemy does. They use tactics against their prisoners—only a couple to my knowledge being US servicemen—that go well beyond what is accepted in the world as civilized. Ask Daniel Pearl if he received fair treatment when his captors beheaded him.

Mr. Durbin said, "I am confident, sadly confident, as I stand here, that decades from now, people will look back and say: 'What were they thinking? America, this great, kind leader of a nation, treated people who were detained and imprisoned, interrogated people in the crudest way?' "

And I am confidant that decades from now none of these nuts on the Left will even be worthy of a footnote in history. People like Durbin, Reid, Boxer, etc., ad nauseum, have savaged the administration over NOTHING. They despise this president, and they disdain the efforts he is taking to make America more secure. (Yes, I have gripes about that, but I have none for our troops in harm’s way.)

They absolutely abhor the troops, and they are using that hate to lash out at the president. They are using that distaste in an attempt to demoralize this nation by presenting a picture of an evil man on an evil mission rather than that of a sitting United States president that, after Sept. 11th, did his job by taking this nation to war against a group of beasts that struck us without warning or provocation.

And no, I am anything but naive. I understand all too well what this war is about. Even if I did not have a personal interest in this war (my brother is an Army Ranger in Afghanistan) I would still support the troops just as vehemently. These brave men and women deserve our respect, not our rejection. They deserve a handshake and a hug, and a "thank you for your service", not the hateful, spiteful rhetoric of the Left and their followers.

In closing, Senator Durbin, do not bother to apologize; America will not believe it. You are on the record, and it is sad that you truly believe this. Your statements show not only how utterly foolish you and your ilk are, but it further points to the fact that you are, sir, utterly inept and incompetent. You are, in a word, stupid, as you cannot even remember the truth from history, and speak on the subject in an educated way.

You, Senator Durbin, should be kissing the ass of every man and woman serving in this nation’s military. Without them, you have no job. Without them, you do not have the freedom to sound like an absolute, uneducated ass.

The Bunny ;)