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Karl Mueller, Diamond Nights, Giant Catfish, Gay Penguins and the Geep   Printer-friendly page   Send this story to someone
Monday, June 20, 2005 - 08:30 AM
Posted by: kbade

Karl

SEN. DICK DURBIN (D-IL) issues a statement regarding his prior comparison of alleged incidents of detainee abuse at Camp X-Ray to the practices of Nazi death camps, the Soviet glag and the Khmer Rouge: "I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. 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." However, Durbin also told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that "If there's a lesson to be learned here it's not that my remarks were wrong or that there's any need for apology. It's the fact that they have successfully twisted them out of context."

Even if that was true, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch goes on to quote Robert Goldman, a former U.N. expert on protecting human rights while combating terrorism, that Durbin and Amnesty International "undermine their cause by gratuitously giving... ammunition to those who frankly do not want to have scrutiny on these policies." But the real problem with Durbin's statement is that Camp X-Ray is simply not anywhere in the ballpark of the Nazi death camps, the Soviet gulag or the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. The Anti-Defamation League doesn't think so. The International Comittee of the Red Cross, the only independent group that been allowed to visit terror suspects detained in Guantanamo Bay, doesn't think so. The American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars don't think so. Gulag survivor Natan Sharansky doesn't think so. Pavel Litvinov, who was beaten and exiled to Siberia for protesting the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in Red Square, doesn't think so. Retired Navy Commander Paul Galanti, who spent seven years as a prisoner-of-war in the infamous Hanoi Hilton, doesn't think so. State Democratic Party Chairs in Idaho, New Mexico and Arizona don't think so. But you don't have to take their opinions at face value: The Jump Blog reprints Durbin's statement, followed by descriptions of what occurred in Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Pol Pot's Cambodia, so you can reach your own conclusions.

It should be noted that Sen. Durbin was reading from an e-mail sent by an FBI agent investigating alleged abuse, so it might have occurred to him that this sort of investigation wasn't being done in Auschwitz. As for the substance of the agent's e-mail, it describes treatment of detainees that reminds me much more of past abuses at Area Two Police Headquarters in Chicago and the Cook County jail. And the incidents described are not the electrical shock torture, weeks-long floggings, total sensory deprivation and steady stream of killing discovered in just one torture house run by insurgents in Iraq put out of business by U.S. troops in the last couple of days.

None of which is to say that alleged abuses at Camp X-Ray shouldn't be investigated (as they are by the FBI) and any guilty parties punished. It is to say the Sen. Durbin's statement is not being taken out of context, it is an extreme overstatement -- it is "ammunition" given not only to those who want to avoid the alleged abuses at Gitmo, but also to terrorists to use as propaganda and thereby increase the risk to U.S. troops who have nothing to do with any alleged abuses.

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