Dick durbin has lost his mind

He was on the Senate floor yesterday and compared us to the Nazis, the Soviets, and Pol Pot because we turned the air conditioner down low and played loud rap music.

He sure is living up to the Dick namesake.

Who was he talking about?

Do you have a link?

Here's one i found.

I've never seen the above site before.

Sanc'.

Durbin's Actual Remarks:

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.

Our administration's actual remarks:

President Bush, Oct. 8 2003:
"Iraq is free of rape rooms and torture chambers."


Scott McClellan, Dec. 10, 2003:
"There was an announcement by the Iraqi Governing Council earlier this week about the tribunal that they have set up to hold accountable members of the former regime who were responsible for three decades of brutality and atrocities. ... We know about the mass graves and the rape rooms and the torture chambers of Saddam Hussein's regime. ... We welcome their decision to move forward on a tribunal to hold people accountable for those atrocities."

President Bush, Jan. 12, 2004:
"One thing is for certain: There won't be any more mass graves and torture rooms and rape rooms."

Apparently countries that condone torture get liberated. And guess what? We even really do have WMD's.

Attacking Senator Durbin for calling out our criminal hypocrisy and inhumane acts does not make one a patriot. It makes one a wingnut.

Yes, now I've heard about this. Sorry but the original post wasn't very specific.

I think it is outrageous to compare Guantanamo where no one has died with camps where millions were murdered.

T-shirt I've seen recently:

Front... Club Gitmo

Back... Your tropical release from the stress of Jihad!

If anything these prisoners are being coddled. They are trained to piss & moan if they are captured.

Let's ask John McCain (former POW) if he would compare his captivity to what goes on it Gitmo.

NYC schools don't have AC and students are forced to go sit in classrooms that reach temps of over 100 degrees F.
Gitmo has AC and the prisoners are issued Korans. Can you imagine the outrage if NYC students where issued Bibles?

Durbin continued:

The President could declare the United States will apply the Geneva Conventions to the war on terrorism. He could declare, as he should, that the United States will not, under any circumstances, subject any detainee to torture, or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. The administration could give all detainees a meaningful opportunity to challenge their detention before a neutral decisionmaker. Such a change of course would dramatically improve our image and it would make us safer. I hope this administration will choose that course. If they do not, Congress must step in.

You may disagree with his logic (try anyway), but the only thing outrageous about this is the right wing coverage and reaction. Avoid the issue, ignore the appeal, and just play offended outraged patriot.

Senator Durbin responds to attacks:

June 15, 2005
STATEMENT BY SENATOR DICK DURBIN

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

“And I remind the White House the Guantanamo Bay scandal has reached such a level of national embarrassment that Senators from both parties are calling for the closure of that facility.”

I really don't understand the "values" party at all. Who's values? The country overwhelming says stay out of the Schiavo case, so you pull an all nighter with Congress and the President stepping in. America overwhelmingly says torturing terrorists suspects is against our values, so you do it and defend it. You try to impeach popular sitting Presidents against the public's wishes. You try to ban legal medical procedures the country wants. You're really patently out of touch with everything, and if you weren't such cynical, button pushing, wedge artists that run everything and were ever subjected to an actual democracy by the issue, you'd all be tarred and feathered for your anti-democratic authoritarian crap.

If the Congress wants to criticize Gitmo, fine go ahead and do it. But when they start invoking Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot to compare a prisoner of war camp with like 500 people in it where there have been no executions or deaths is simply ridiculous...

Congratulations Dick! Al Jazeera loves you!

english.aljazeera.net...

Traitor.

It's not even cognitive dissonace. It's been clearly explained to you, the marketing hysteria has been splayed open and yet you still retort soley on the misdirection mindf**k that has all the "party of values" faithful in a full on sheep shearing stampede over symantical references to regimes that did what we've done.
No, not all of them killed exclusively; even the Nazi's tortured for tortures sake - ask the Polish in the camps.
At what point did America re-vector at the ankles to be 'equal to & slightly better than' brutal regimes? How's the equation work? That we've got camps filled with uncharged & innocent detainees who were sold to us by Afgani warlords ( who simply filled the tickets as outsourced 'terrorist bounty hunters" & sold these detainees to us, though the verifcation of their actual crimes were left to the warlord, who simply offered food & camp to lure refugees in - confirmed they were Muslim - and sold them off as terrorists), that works as being a shining example of egalitarian values?
If they're uncharged, sent to a camp with zero access by media or by legal representation, have zero communication with the outside world, you can say that they were 10 ft tall & pissed acid because nobody can dispute it.
At what point is the realization that someone pinched two years ago is of zero assest? We've had enough of our Intel people describe the structure of the terror cells = need to know basis, foot soilders told nothing a handful of captains direct all - one cells team doesn't know the others.
So, prisons full of detainees in Cuba - Afghanistan - Iraq, logically, hold mostly innocent people. All others are POW's & need to be charged/treated as such.

It's remarkable that people on this board do not insult you non-stop; the abhorration of perspective is too close to clinical definitions of mental illness.