The Wrong Apology

The wrong person apologized yesterday.

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) yesterday offered a tearful apology on the Senate floor for comparing the alleged abuse of prisoners by American troops to techniques used by the Nazis, the Soviets and the Khmer Rouge, as he sought to quell a frenzy of Republican-led criticism...Durbin, the Democratic whip, acknowledged that "more than most people, a senator lives by his words" but that "occasionally words will fail us and occasionally we will fail words." Choking up, he said: "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line. To them, I extend my heartfelt apologies."

Durbin was not wrong. Not wrong in what he said. Not wrong in saying it. And the only person who has crossed the line is George W. Bush -- and we've heard no apologies from him.

Let's review. Durbin, quoting from an FBI memo, described how some detainees at Gitmo were chained naked, hand and foot to a concrete floor and left that way for up to 18 hours a day, where they inevitably urinated and defecated on themselves.

Durbin observed, correctly, that if someone read that account not knowing anything more, they would assume the people doing this to prisoners were Nazis or one of the other despicable regimes of history. 

Durbin was immediately flamed by the White House and Republicans in Congress. How dare he compare the behavior of US soldiers to that of Nazis?

Okay, let's give the devil his due. The US does not systematically execute prisoners; at least not as a matter of course. We don't perform medical experiments on them. We don't rape them. That's the kind of stuff the Nazis, Soviets and Pol Pot did. We don't do that stuff — yet.

But let me tell you why Durbin was right to make the comparison. And to make my point I am going to use the same argument conservatives use to justify their war on drugs.

If marijuana is a gateway drug, I ask conservatives, what's chaining a person naked to a cement floor and letting them sit in their own waste all day? A taste of torture? A snort of the abuse? Where do you go from there? A few lines of water-boardering? From there it's a short step to electric shock (after all, they're already wet.)

It's the proverbial slippery slope. And we're on it.

Summary of FBI interview of detainee at Guantanamo Bay 08/23/02, Notes: "when NAME REDACTED was turned over to US authorities, he was beaten by the US military forces. He was taken by helicopter to an unknown location where he was beaten. While his eyes were covered, he was kicked in the stomach and back by several individuals. He noted American English accents. After being moved to an unknown facility in Bagram, his head was placed against the cement floor and his head was kicked. As a result of other beatings... REDACTED received a broken shoulder. During one evening REDACTED was left outside of the facility where he was being held. The ground was wet and it was snowing. He was wearing only pants and a ragged shirt. As a result of being out in the cold, he became unconscious. . . . . When he was moved to Kandahar, he was not beaten as frequently and severely... He was dragged three times to interrogations. On one occasion during prayer time, a soldier placed his foot on REDACTED head and sat on his head. REDACTED stated that the soldiers wore tan and brown camouflage uniforms, with US flags on their arms." (More FBI Memos)

If you think about all this for a moment with the partisan side of your brain turned off, you can see that all Durbin was trying to do was what any responsible parent of a teen would do after finding meth in their daughter's purse. He was trying to warn that we are playing with fire.

But, instead of listening up, his colleagues got all defensive, ganged up and beat the crap out of him. They kept it up until he agreed to say, "it ain't so."