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6-20-2005
“More than 1700 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq and our country’s standing in the world community
has been badly damaged by the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,” Senator Dick Durbin (D) ranted. “I
will continue to speak out when I disagree with this administration.”
Throughout many sectors of the country
Senator Durbin’s name is now synonymous with that of Hanoi Jane Fonda or Baghdad Jim McDermott. He decided he would
use outlandish and completely absurd language of equating American soldiers in Guantanamo Bay with Nazis, Stalinist Soviets,
and Pol Pot as a way of ‘disagreeing with this administration’.
It seems as though he may have been emboldened
to follow this tact, because of the outrageous allegation spewed by Amnesty International who earlier had labeled Gitmo as
the ‘gulag of our time’. Of course, this exaggerated assertion entirely disregards the torture and rape camps
of the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq, which took place during ‘our time’.
But, then, Senator Ted Kennedy
had already leveled his own Durbinesque rhetoric against our military men and women about Abu Ghraib prison when he equated
their activities with that of Saddam’s henchmen by stating that the prison had ‘re-opened under new management’.
In all three cases, the perpetrators of these accusations are disregarding, not only, the effect their mendacious
statements have on the emotional well being of our troops and their families, but the fact that those words, spoken by political
leaders of America, will encourage the enemy whose terrorist activities are resulting in the very deaths Senator Durbin referred
to.
And for what?
So they can launch a misguided attack against President Bush and his administration. That,
ultimately, is the saddest aspect to this ridiculous debacle. Certain Americans would care so little about the safety of American
military personnel that they would risk emboldening the enemy by denigrating our military men and women in an attempt to score
political points.
Ah, but the plot thickens. Senator Durbin wasn’t finished. He then issued a categorical slap
in the face to those he had defamed. “I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings:
Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support,” he stated
blankly. Then he went right back on the attack, “My statement in the Senate was critical of the policies of this administration,
which add to the risk our soldiers face.”
He got one thing right, his ‘statement in the Senate’ can
‘add to the risk our soldiers face‘.
What about the assertion that his statement was actually being critical
of this administration and it’s policies, not of the troops?
Let’s examine the evidence. On the Senate
floor, Senator Durbin said, “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.”
First of all, why would anyone believe that
when he asserted, ‘this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others’,
he was referring to the President and his administration, when in fact Durbin made a point of making sure everyone knew who
he was talking about by adding, ‘This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners’.
Second,
the ‘Americans’ he alluded to are soldiers in our military, not administration officials, and he directly connected
their actions with those of Nazis, Soviets, and Pol Pot where 9 million people were slaughtered by Hitler, 2.7 million died
while actually being tortured in the Soviet gulags, and 1.7 million killed by Pol Pot.
It’s a pretty big exaggeration
for Amnesty International to compare Guantanamo Bay or even Abu Ghraib, for that matter, to a ‘gulag’ and it’s
reprehensible for an American Senator to equate our soldiers to torturous despots, even if they are just trying to malign
President Bush.
“Clearly, that’s over the top. That is not what is happening at Guantanamo Bay,”
said Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas). “What is happening at Guantanamo Bay is we’re trying to treat people humanely,
recognizing that these are terrorists.”
Republican Senator from Virginia, George Allen went even further, “Senator
Durbin’s statements are deplorable. He should ask for forgiveness, forgiveness from our troops, from their families
and all of us who are trying to win this War on Terror.”
The recalcitrant Senator Durbin wasn’t about to
back down and decided to turn to the old faithful Democrat tactic of attempting to divert the attention to ‘the right-wing
conspiracy’. “Now, sadly, we have a situation here where some in the right-wing media have said that I have been
insulting men and women in uniform. Nothing could be further from the truth,” Durbin intoned.
Durbin clearly
stated, “This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.” What is further from the truth,
Senator, is your accusatory statement about our troops, and your newfound buddies at the terrorist friendly Al Jazeera news
network agrees with your sentiment so much they are proudly reiterating it for all the Arab world to see... including the
terrorists attacking our troops.
Even Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid was unsure how to react to Durbin’s equivocation,
much like he did with Howard Dean. Is the shrill echo growing? “The more the popularity of the President plummets, the
more the people downtown try to play the game of attack,” Reid said. “This is all an attempt at distracting us
from the officials before us... Do we have a problem with the issues [Durbin] is discussing? Yes, let’s focus on them.”
So
the right-wing attack machine is called into play again as Durbin’s fellow Democrats try the same diversionary tactic
he used by asserting the problem is not what Durbin said, but the fact that some in the media... pointed it out!
You
can call Gitmo a ‘gulag’. You can call President Bush a terrorist. You can even say that turning the air conditioning
up really high is torture. But you better not ever make an issue out of what a liberal actually says, because what they said
is not really what they meant to say.
Gitmo isn’t really a ‘gulag’, it’s just the ‘gulag
of our time’. President Bush isn’t really a terrorist, he’s just terrorizing terrorists. Our military personnel
aren’t acting like Nazi’s, President Bush’s policies and his Administration are.
Have the assaults
by liberals on our military reached a rhetorical crescendo? We’ll just have to endure the prisoner abuse at Gitmo of
eating one orange glazed chicken dinner at a time to find out.
Lee P Butler
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