Tannishblog

Senator Richard Durbin (D- Illinois) is taking a lot of heat today. Power Line’s Paul Mirengoff doesn’t like the allegations that the Senator invoked other regimes with poor records for human rights. Paul says Senator Durbin is “foaming at the mouth.” Paul shows selective amnesia by forgetting that the Rebublican base has been using these tactics for years: just one word – “Feminazi.”

Michelle Malkin used her phrase “unhinged” (patent pending) to express, as she like to do, concern over sentiments that don’t fit her rigid, nearsighted views. She is appalled that the Senator doesn’t apologize, calling him treacherous (gasp!). She hasn’t yet called him a moonbat, but she will. I’m sure she’s thanking God we never repealed that lynching bill.

So, what’s the fuss? Dick Durbin - like him or hate him - is calling things as he sees them. To take a stand against the entrenched warbloggers, to walk into a room full of political assassins, to dare to say anything counter-BushCo… What is this man thinking?

Here’s what he’s thinking:

“It’s not a question of whether detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay or some other location. The question is how we should treat those who have been detained there. Whether we treat them according to the law or not does not depend on their address. It depends on our policy as a nation.

How should we treat them? This is not a new question. We are writing on a blank slate. We have entered into treaties over the years, saying this is how we will treat detainees. The United States has retified these treaties. They are the law of the land as much as any statute we passed. They have served our country well in past wars. We have held ourselves to be a civilized country, willing to play by the rules, even in time of war.

Unfortunately, without even consulting congress, the Bush administration unilaterally decided to set aside these treaties and create their own rules about the treatment of prisoners. Frankly, this congress has failed to hold the administration accountable for its failure to follow the law of the land when it comes to the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and detainees.”

Setting aside the well-deserved barbs at BushCo. What the Senator has realized is that the detainees at Gitmo are – sit down for this – PEOPLE! They’re the same as we are, human beings, and as such they deserve to betreated in as humane manner as possible. The United States has laws about this kind of thing; George Bush doesn’t abide by them. Alberto Gonzales, in his role as White House chief counsel, advised to ignore the laws of the Geneva Convention, against protest from Colin Powell as Secretary of State. In the Bush White House a mere aid can override a Cabinet-level opinion. But wait: It gets better:

“After the President decided to ignore Geneva Conventions, the administration unilaterally created a new detention policy. They claim the fight to seize anyone, including even American citizens, anywhere in the world, including the United States, and hold them until the end of the war on terrorism, whenever that might be…

…They claim a person detained in the war on terrorism has no legal rights – no right to a lawyer, no right to see the evidence against them, no right to challenge their detention. In fact, the government has claimed detainees have no right to challenge their detention, even if they claim they were being tortured or executed.

This violates the Geneva Conventions, which protect everyone captured during wartime.”

Apparently, rules are for wimps. As an aside, I see many people who think that way as I commute to work and back. Laws that are in place for the safety of our roadways are flaunted, and outwardly violated because – after all – “the rules don’t apply to me.” Hmm… They must be republicans, too.

Back to the article: Senator Durban quotes Colin Powell, consummate soldier that he is, by mentioning something that the MSM sill probably never print:

“Remember what Secretary of State Colin Powell said? It is not a matter of following the law because we said we would, it is a matter of how our troops will be treated in the future. That is something overlooked here. If we want standards of civilized conduct to be applied to Americans captured in a warlike situation, we have to extend the same manner and type of treatment to those whom we detain, our prisoners.

Secretary Rumsfeld approved numerous abusive interrogation tactics against prisoners in Guantanamo. The Red Cross concluded that the use of those methods was “a form of torture.”

The United States, which each year issued a human rights report, holding the world accountable for outrageous conduct, is engaged in the same outrageous conduct when it comes to these prisoners.”

That pretty much sums up Senator Durbin’s thinking: Once again, the Bush administration is taking a hypocritical stance. A stance that the whole world sees as clearly as Dick Durbin, one which places the future of our brave soldiers at further risk due to flaunting the Geneva Conventions.

But none of the above is what the warblogging community is attacking. That is because they can’t. All of the senator’s points are valid, and painfully obvious. No, what they try to bring him down with is historical comparisons. Perhaps his comparisons were a bit awkward, but taken in its entirety, the meaning is clear. And that meaning is not what some would like us to believe.

“When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here – I almost hesitate to put them in record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let my 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 is was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done my Nazis, soviets, or some mad regime – Pol Pot or others – that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, this is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”

There is it: three sentences out of eight paged of total text. This short paragraph is structured in such a way that the right cannot quote it directly without deflating their very objections. Our administration is comprised of war criminals, and by everything that makes us Americans, must be held accountable. BushCo spits at established international accords. BushCo spits at averything they don’t like, don’t want to do, and at anyone who dares to disagree. I close with Senator Durbin’s closing sentence:

“To criticize the rest of the world for using torture and to turn a blind eye to what we are doing in this war is wrong, and it is not American.”

Thank you, Senator. Well done.

Postscript: Redwood Dragon has an interesting take on this.