Thursday, June 16, 2005
Sen. Durbin: Gitmo GI's Behaved Like 'Nazis'
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin compared U.S. troops to Hitler's concentration camp guards on Tuesday, saying that the way American soldiers treated terrorists at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay reminded him of the "Nazis."
Citing FBI accounts of terrorist detainees forced to go without heat or air conditioning, Durbin told the Senate:
"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," added the number two Senate Democrat. "This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
Durbin's comments outraged radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was the first to broadcast the Illinois Democrat's remarks.
Senator Durbin Should Be Ashamed
"Senator, I'm embarrassed for you," Limbaugh told his audience. "I'm embarrassed that you are an American. I'm embarrassed that you are a United States Senator. This is just over the top for you to draw this analogy."
Limbaugh noted that the heat endured by detainees at Guantanamo is actually less extreme than conditions faced by U.S. troops in Iraq.
"In Iraq right now where our troops are wearing all that body armor, it's 130 degrees, senator. It's 130 degrees in Iraq! It's 130 degrees around the country where a lot of our troops are working. It's freezing in parts of the world where our troops are working. It's hotter in Iraq than it is in a cell at Gitmo, where we have a terrorists who wants to blow up Americans that we're trying to get information from them."
The Nazis were literally brutal. We have nothing in common with them. The Soviets and their gulags? The Soviets killed over 1.7 million people in their gulags alone. Many of their gulags were in Siberia, where it's often below zero on a daily basis. That's not Guantanamo Bay and what we did -- and Pol Pot? The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? Pol Pot was a mass murderer of his own citizens.
Over two million Cambodians mass murdered by Pol Pot. Now, I don't care whatever you think of this description of what happened to this one detainee.
This is just absurd. We don't deserve to win this war as long as we have people like Dick Durbin in the US Senate. We don't deserve to win it when we got Durbin and his colleagues like Pat Leahy doing everything they can to undermine it.
We're not a great enough country. We are spawning people like this that idiots in Illinois elect to send to the Senate. We don't deserve to win it. We deserve to lose this war. If we're going to be led by such idiocy and such ignorance as this, we deserve to lose it, folks. There's a price to pay for having this kind of thinking at the highest levels of government.
Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin compared U.S. troops to Hitler's concentration camp guards on Tuesday, saying that the way American soldiers treated terrorists at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay reminded him of the "Nazis."
Citing FBI accounts of terrorist detainees forced to go without heat or air conditioning, Durbin told the Senate:
"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," added the number two Senate Democrat. "This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners."
Durbin's comments outraged radio host Rush Limbaugh, who was the first to broadcast the Illinois Democrat's remarks.
Senator Durbin Should Be Ashamed
"Senator, I'm embarrassed for you," Limbaugh told his audience. "I'm embarrassed that you are an American. I'm embarrassed that you are a United States Senator. This is just over the top for you to draw this analogy."
Limbaugh noted that the heat endured by detainees at Guantanamo is actually less extreme than conditions faced by U.S. troops in Iraq.
"In Iraq right now where our troops are wearing all that body armor, it's 130 degrees, senator. It's 130 degrees in Iraq! It's 130 degrees around the country where a lot of our troops are working. It's freezing in parts of the world where our troops are working. It's hotter in Iraq than it is in a cell at Gitmo, where we have a terrorists who wants to blow up Americans that we're trying to get information from them."
The Nazis were literally brutal. We have nothing in common with them. The Soviets and their gulags? The Soviets killed over 1.7 million people in their gulags alone. Many of their gulags were in Siberia, where it's often below zero on a daily basis. That's not Guantanamo Bay and what we did -- and Pol Pot? The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia? Pol Pot was a mass murderer of his own citizens.
Over two million Cambodians mass murdered by Pol Pot. Now, I don't care whatever you think of this description of what happened to this one detainee.
This is just absurd. We don't deserve to win this war as long as we have people like Dick Durbin in the US Senate. We don't deserve to win it when we got Durbin and his colleagues like Pat Leahy doing everything they can to undermine it.
We're not a great enough country. We are spawning people like this that idiots in Illinois elect to send to the Senate. We don't deserve to win it. We deserve to lose this war. If we're going to be led by such idiocy and such ignorance as this, we deserve to lose it, folks. There's a price to pay for having this kind of thinking at the highest levels of government.
