{"id":144,"date":"2005-06-19T16:03:11","date_gmt":"2005-06-19T23:03:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=144"},"modified":"2007-07-08T21:41:21","modified_gmt":"2007-07-09T04:41:21","slug":"dick-durbin-traitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/?p=144","title":{"rendered":"Dick Durbin, Traitor?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, Senator Durbin of Illinois spoke about the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay. People are calling him a traitor<\/a> for comparing the USA to Nazi Germany and other evil regimes. They say his speech puts our troops at risk and encourages terrorism. They say he hates America.<\/p>\n

But did he actually compare the USA to Nazi Germany and other evil regimes? No, not exactly. Here’s what he said<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He didn’t compare the USA to the Nazis or the Soviets or the Khmer Rouge. He said that if you read that report and didn’t know it was written by an FBI agent, the country you’d think of would not be the United States of America. Okay, maybe not Nazi Germany or the USSR or the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Kampuchea – El Salvador might have been a better (and less inflammatory) choice\u00a0– but definitely not the USA. He said that what we’re doing to the detainees at Guantanamo is not in accordance with American values, and that by abandoning American values we are only hurting ourselves. He said this:<\/p>\n

To win the war on terrorism, we must remain true to the principles upon which our country was founded. This administration’s detention and interrogation policies are placing our troops at risk and making it harder to combat terrorism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he went on to quote Congressman Pete Peterson of Florida, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam:<\/p>\n

From my 6\u00bd 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Is the meaning of “support our troops” restricted to full and uncritical support of the Bush administration’s every action? I hope not. I agree with Senator Durbin – we support our troops best by standing firm on American values and principles. What’s treasonous about that?<\/p>\n

Update (22 June 2005)<\/font>: Durbin caves, shames self, cause.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last Tuesday, Senator Durbin of Illinois spoke about the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay. People are calling him a traitor for comparing the USA to Nazi Germany and other evil regimes. They say his speech puts our troops at risk and encourages terrorism. They say he hates America. But did he actually compare the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-politics","category-war"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}