Memo To Durbin: This Is Torture, Dumbass.
I do not often get upset. My brother taught me that anger and rage cloud one’s judgment and thinking. Tuesday was not an easy day around here. Sen. Dick Durbin opened up his mouth and did not stop at the foot swallowing. He swallowed his foot and half of his leg, as well. The comparison he made was demonstrably false and foolish.
Our troops are no more Nazis that Jesus and his disciples were. This country is nothin like Pol Pot’s regime, or the Soviet Empire. (I know there are plenty of nutty and stupid people out there that think this country is evil. To them I say move. If you dislike this nation so much, and if you dislike her people, then I honestly do not want you here. This is not a "nationalistic" stance. It is a fact of life from yours truly.)
To compare the actions of our troops at Gitmo to what the Nazis did to their "prisoners" in the concentration camps, or the twenty million-plus people murdered in Stalin’s gulags, or the thugs under Pol Pot that killed close to three million people is not just plain idiotic, but it is also intellectually dishonest.
NO confirmed deaths have come from Gitmo. Minor instances of "abuse" have been investigated. (For a real shock, go to Thomas’ post from Thursday, and click the first link to MyPetJawa; the photos tell the whole story.) The story below I found from the New York Times (HT: Captain’s Quarters), and I think that maybe Sen. Durbin should sit down, read this, and get in contact with the couple people interviewed.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004747.php
I am positive they could set the doddering old fool straight as to what is and is not "torture". I am not surprised that there are "torture" houses in these town where the insurgents are hiding. As a few of them are former Fedayeen animals, and Baathists from the Hussein regime, I am sure they miss this sort of work. The insurgents and terrorists were only too happy to find these people and employ them once again.
KARABILA, Iraq, Sunday, June 19 - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.
The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.
In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.
"They kill somebody every day," said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people."
From the house on Saturday, there could be heard sounds of fighting from the large-scale offensive to eliminate strongholds of insurgents, many of whom stream across Iraq's porous border with Syria.
As the marines walked through the house - a squat one-story building of sand-colored brick - the broken black window glass crunched under their boots. Light poured in, revealing walls and ceiling shredded by shrapnel from the blast they had set off to break in through a wall. Latex gloves were strewn on the floor. A kerosene lantern lay on its side, shattered.
The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."
(An aside here. This is no more surprising than the numerous al-Qaeda training manuals that we have uncovered in Afghanistan and Iraq. But for idiots like Durbin, he probably assumes this is just "summer reading" for the terrorist animals.)
Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up.
This is Mr. Fathil's account of his ordeal.
He was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in the kitchen of his home in the small desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.
The drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him.
The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi Army. Unemployed and illiterate, Mr. Fathil signed up after the American occupation began.
But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the Jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle's son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.
The men tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand, instead of water, to wash himself. Just once, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, "You won't leave until you are dead."
Mr. Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.
The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Mr. Fathil said he was fed once a day, and allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.
When marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead.
The others were emaciated and battered. Mr. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.
But he still had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings criss-crossed his back, and deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin.
The shocks, he said, felt "like my soul is being ripped out of my body." But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.
Mr. Fathil has been at the Marine base south of Qaim since his release, on Saturday around noon. His mother still does not know he is alive.
When she was mentioned, he bowed and lowered his head, and began to cry softly, wiping his face with the jumpsuit given him by the marines.
He asked a reporter for help to move to another town, because it was too dangerous for his family to remain in their house. He begged not to have a photograph taken, even of the scars on his back. The captors took pictures of that, he said.
His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.
"These few are destroying it," he said, his face streaked with tears. "Everybody they take, they kill. It's on a daily basis pretty much."
Sen. Durbin, do you still think we do torture at Gitmo? You still think the Marine/Navy base down there is a gulag? The home the Marines raided in Karabila sure sounded like one of the buildings in a gulag where they torture and beat people. It is disgusting that Sen. Durbin still has his leadership position in the Senate after making comments comparing this nation and her fighting forces to three of the 20th Century’s most brutal dictatorships.
I do not care if he is censured. I would prefer that does happen, but he loses his position as the number Two Democrat in the Senate. Trent Lott was forced out of his Majority Leader position in the Senate over a minor comment, that was innocent enough, on the outside. The outrage that exploded over that comment was all it took, and within a few days, Trent Lott was done as the leader of the GOP in the Senate. His comment was minor—a tribute to a longtime friend and ally—and fairly innocuous. The people did not see it that way when more comments pooped up recently-made by the senator, and they reflected similar sentiments; those reflecting the segregationist past that Lott and Thurmond used to share.
Sen. Durbin was not taken out of context, nor was he misunderstood.
"If I read this to you, and didn’t tell you it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that’s not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of our own prisoners" (Transcribed from the original statements made on the floor of the Senate, June 14th, 2005.)
And he has tried to spin it that he did not state soldiers were involved in these incidents. That is true, he never did state that. But it is implied. It would only be Americans interrogating these people, so whether they are military interrogators, or CIA, or NSA, or DIA, or FBI, it does not matter. They are Americans, they are doing their jobs, and he is accusing them of torture. Thomas pointed out that the Democrat Party has been doing this sort of defamation for some time, now.
I am just one of a few people (a vast majority, to be exact) that are getting sick of this. Every time someone like Durbin spouts off stupidity like this it is a disservice to the men and women in uniform (my brother being one of them; hence the anger). Further, when people do spew false information about this war, it emboldens our enemy. Our enemy uses propaganda as much as we do, and they have a ready-and-willing news outlet willing to act as a Goebbels-like mouthpiece. Comments by fools like Durbin, like Kennedy (Abu Ghraib is up and running under US management, and the torture continues. Remember his comments to that effect?) give our enemies credence and credibility. It has to stop.
We, personally, would like to see Durbin’s resignation from the Senate, but at the least, he should brow-beat out of his leadership position (as we did with Trent Lott), and face censure. I encourage those in the Senate to move forward with a measure to censure this man, and call for his resignation.
The Bunny ;)
I do not often get upset. My brother taught me that anger and rage cloud one’s judgment and thinking. Tuesday was not an easy day around here. Sen. Dick Durbin opened up his mouth and did not stop at the foot swallowing. He swallowed his foot and half of his leg, as well. The comparison he made was demonstrably false and foolish.
Our troops are no more Nazis that Jesus and his disciples were. This country is nothin like Pol Pot’s regime, or the Soviet Empire. (I know there are plenty of nutty and stupid people out there that think this country is evil. To them I say move. If you dislike this nation so much, and if you dislike her people, then I honestly do not want you here. This is not a "nationalistic" stance. It is a fact of life from yours truly.)
To compare the actions of our troops at Gitmo to what the Nazis did to their "prisoners" in the concentration camps, or the twenty million-plus people murdered in Stalin’s gulags, or the thugs under Pol Pot that killed close to three million people is not just plain idiotic, but it is also intellectually dishonest.
NO confirmed deaths have come from Gitmo. Minor instances of "abuse" have been investigated. (For a real shock, go to Thomas’ post from Thursday, and click the first link to MyPetJawa; the photos tell the whole story.) The story below I found from the New York Times (HT: Captain’s Quarters), and I think that maybe Sen. Durbin should sit down, read this, and get in contact with the couple people interviewed.
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004747.php
I am positive they could set the doddering old fool straight as to what is and is not "torture". I am not surprised that there are "torture" houses in these town where the insurgents are hiding. As a few of them are former Fedayeen animals, and Baathists from the Hussein regime, I am sure they miss this sort of work. The insurgents and terrorists were only too happy to find these people and employ them once again.
KARABILA, Iraq, Sunday, June 19 - Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual - and four beaten and shackled Iraqis.
The American military has found torture houses after invading towns heavily populated by insurgents - like Falluja, where the anti-insurgent assault last fall uncovered almost 20 such sites. But rarely have they come across victims who have lived to tell the tale.
The men said they told the marines, from Company K, Third Marines, Second Division, that they had been tortured with shocks and flogged with a strip of rubber for more than two weeks, unseen behind the windows of black glass. One of them, Ahmed Isa Fathil, 19, a former member of the new Iraqi Army, said he had been held and tortured there for 22 days. All the while, he said, his face was almost entirely taped over and his hands were cuffed.
In an interview with an embedded reporter just hours after he was freed, he said he had never seen the faces of his captors, who occasionally whispered at him, "We will kill you." He said they did not question him, and he did not know what they wanted. Nor did he ever expect to be released.
"They kill somebody every day," said Mr. Fathil, whose hands were so swollen he could not open a can of Coke offered to him by a marine. "They've killed a lot of people."
From the house on Saturday, there could be heard sounds of fighting from the large-scale offensive to eliminate strongholds of insurgents, many of whom stream across Iraq's porous border with Syria.
As the marines walked through the house - a squat one-story building of sand-colored brick - the broken black window glass crunched under their boots. Light poured in, revealing walls and ceiling shredded by shrapnel from the blast they had set off to break in through a wall. Latex gloves were strewn on the floor. A kerosene lantern lay on its side, shattered.
The manual recovered - a fat, well-thumbed Arabic paperback - listed itself as the 2005 First Edition of "The Principles of Jihadist Philosophy," by Abdel Rahman al-Ali. Its chapters included "How to Select the Best Hostage," and "The Legitimacy of Cutting the Infidels' Heads."
(An aside here. This is no more surprising than the numerous al-Qaeda training manuals that we have uncovered in Afghanistan and Iraq. But for idiots like Durbin, he probably assumes this is just "summer reading" for the terrorist animals.)
Also recovered were several fake passports, a black hood, the painkiller Percoset, handcuffs and an explosives how-to-guide. Three cars loaded with explosives were parked in a garage outside the house. The marines blew them up.
This is Mr. Fathil's account of his ordeal.
He was having a lunch of lettuce and cucumbers in the kitchen of his home in the small desert village of Rabot with his mother and brother. An Opel sedan pulled up. Two men in masks carrying machine guns got out, seized him, and, leaving his mother sobbing, put him in the trunk of their car.
The drove to the house here. They taped his face, put cotton in his ears, and began to beat him.
The only possible explanation for the seizure he could think of was his time in the new Iraqi Army. Unemployed and illiterate, Mr. Fathil signed up after the American occupation began.
But nine months ago, when continuing working meant risking the wrath of the Jihadists, he quit. In all, 10 friends from his unit have been killed, he said. So have his uncle and his uncle's son, though neither ever worked as soldiers.
The men tended to talk in whispers, he said, telling him five times a day, in low voices in his ear, to pray, and offering him sand, instead of water, to wash himself. Just once, he asked if he could see his mother, and one of them said to him, "You won't leave until you are dead."
Mr. Fathil did not know there were other hostages. He found out only after the captors left and he was able to remove the tape from his eyes.
The routine in the house was regular. Because of the windows, it was always dark inside. Mr. Fathil said he was fed once a day, and allowed to use a bathroom as necessary in the back of the house.
When marines burst in, one of the captives was lying under a stairwell, badly beaten. At first, they thought he was dead.
The others were emaciated and battered. Mr. Fathil had fared the best. The other three were taken by medical helicopter to Balad, a base near Baghdad with a hospital.
But he still had been hurt badly. Marks from beatings criss-crossed his back, and deep pocks, apparently from electric shock burns, were gouged in his skin.
The shocks, he said, felt "like my soul is being ripped out of my body." But when he would start to scream, and his body would pull up from the shock, they would begin to beat him, he said.
Mr. Fathil has been at the Marine base south of Qaim since his release, on Saturday around noon. His mother still does not know he is alive.
When she was mentioned, he bowed and lowered his head, and began to cry softly, wiping his face with the jumpsuit given him by the marines.
He asked a reporter for help to move to another town, because it was too dangerous for his family to remain in their house. He begged not to have a photograph taken, even of the scars on his back. The captors took pictures of that, he said.
His town has always been a good place, he said, but the militants have made it hell.
"These few are destroying it," he said, his face streaked with tears. "Everybody they take, they kill. It's on a daily basis pretty much."
Sen. Durbin, do you still think we do torture at Gitmo? You still think the Marine/Navy base down there is a gulag? The home the Marines raided in Karabila sure sounded like one of the buildings in a gulag where they torture and beat people. It is disgusting that Sen. Durbin still has his leadership position in the Senate after making comments comparing this nation and her fighting forces to three of the 20th Century’s most brutal dictatorships.
I do not care if he is censured. I would prefer that does happen, but he loses his position as the number Two Democrat in the Senate. Trent Lott was forced out of his Majority Leader position in the Senate over a minor comment, that was innocent enough, on the outside. The outrage that exploded over that comment was all it took, and within a few days, Trent Lott was done as the leader of the GOP in the Senate. His comment was minor—a tribute to a longtime friend and ally—and fairly innocuous. The people did not see it that way when more comments pooped up recently-made by the senator, and they reflected similar sentiments; those reflecting the segregationist past that Lott and Thurmond used to share.
Sen. Durbin was not taken out of context, nor was he misunderstood.
"If I read this to you, and didn’t tell you it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control you would most certainly believe this must have happened by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime, Pol Pot or others, that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that’s not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of our own prisoners" (Transcribed from the original statements made on the floor of the Senate, June 14th, 2005.)
And he has tried to spin it that he did not state soldiers were involved in these incidents. That is true, he never did state that. But it is implied. It would only be Americans interrogating these people, so whether they are military interrogators, or CIA, or NSA, or DIA, or FBI, it does not matter. They are Americans, they are doing their jobs, and he is accusing them of torture. Thomas pointed out that the Democrat Party has been doing this sort of defamation for some time, now.
I am just one of a few people (a vast majority, to be exact) that are getting sick of this. Every time someone like Durbin spouts off stupidity like this it is a disservice to the men and women in uniform (my brother being one of them; hence the anger). Further, when people do spew false information about this war, it emboldens our enemy. Our enemy uses propaganda as much as we do, and they have a ready-and-willing news outlet willing to act as a Goebbels-like mouthpiece. Comments by fools like Durbin, like Kennedy (Abu Ghraib is up and running under US management, and the torture continues. Remember his comments to that effect?) give our enemies credence and credibility. It has to stop.
We, personally, would like to see Durbin’s resignation from the Senate, but at the least, he should brow-beat out of his leadership position (as we did with Trent Lott), and face censure. I encourage those in the Senate to move forward with a measure to censure this man, and call for his resignation.
The Bunny ;)
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 9:21 AM
1 Comments:
Good blog. durbin knew exactly what he was saying and it would be broadcast over and over in the middle east, especially Iraq, Iran and Syria. He understands giving aid and comfort to the enemy and he intentionally did just that. He also know that the terrorists takes this as a sign that they are winning and we are weak. People will die, including some of our own, directly as a result of his statement. He disgraces America, our troops, living and dead, his state and the senate. He's not fit to be in the senate. His "apology" is a further disgrace. durbin belongs with the traitors, hanoi jane and kerry swaying from the end of a rope. (note: lower case of the first letter of the names is intentional to show my lack of any respect)Rawriter
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