Some in Congress Find Their Vertebrae

Once again, I like Billmon's take on it:

...I did a double take when I saw what Sen. Durbin of Illinois said on the Senate floor yesterday:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the 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. (link courtesy of Talk Left)

I don't know much about Dick Durbin -- he's a solid, dependable Democrat, but definitely not one of the Senate's show horses. I also don't recall him playing the role of human rights champion before. So God help me, when I read what he said I immediately began to wonder what kind of political advantage he hoped to gain from such extravagant use of the truth.

(You know you're a cynic when you automatically suspect a politician is telling the truth for dishonest reasons.)

But as far as I can tell, Durbin had absolutely nothing to gain from this, other than the predictable smears from the GOP propaganda machine and the cave dwellers of the Neanderthal right. (Actually, in Limbaugh's case, I think even homo erectus would be ashamed to have to claim such an ape as a distant cousin.)

I have no idea what motivated Durbin to let it all hang out, except perhaps personal moral outrage and a clear understanding of the practical risks raised by the Bush regime's debasement of the American military.

The quote former Vietnam POW Pete Peterson that Durbin included in his floor speech said just about everything that needs to be said about the latter:

"From my 6 1/2 years of captivity in Vietnam, I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival . . . This is one reason the United States has led the world in upholding treaties governing the status and care of enemy prisoners: because these standards also protect us . . . We need absolute clarity that America will continue to set the gold standard in the treatment of prisoners in wartime."

As for morality . . . Well, if you can't see the evil in locking prisoners of war -- some of them held by mistake, others only foot soldiers in the Taliban's army -- in 100 plus degree rooms for 24 hours without food or water, until they shit or piss all over themselves -- then you're truly beyond redemption. Once you've reached that point, you can probably justify anything, up to and including murder....

But if Durbin had wanted to be completely honest, he would have skipped the rhetorical flourish about the Soviets, the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, and instead pointed out that if we didn't know better, we might think today's horror stories out of Guantanamo and Abu Graib and Baghram were tales told about prisons in El Salvador, Honduras and Argentina thirty years ago -- or South Vietnam, forty years ago.

And if he really wanted to get reckless with the truth, he could have explained the reasons for that resemblance.

But that's probably more truth than even Dick Durbin can afford.

Does the name Black Spot ring a bell?

Predictably, Dick Durbin is already getting threats.