WTF: "Sen. Durbin Apologizes for Gitmo Remarks "

As Fred over at Slacktivist puts is:

....Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called Durbin's statement a "heinous slander against our country and the brave men and women risking their lives every day to defend it."

So let's review, just so we're clear what the new rules are.

Torture as official policy: A source of national pride; no apology necessary.

Condemning torture: A "heinous slander" against America; you must apologize or resign.

The apologists for torture need never apologize. But those who reject it -- reject it on the basis that it is fundamentally un-American -- are condemned.

Those are the new rules. Next up: Sen. Frist demands a tearful public apology from Spc. Joseph Darby.

You remember Joseph Darby, he's the brave soldier who stood up for America and American principles by blowing the whistle on some of the more egregious abuses of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. Oh, wait, let's rephrase according to the new rules: He's the cowardly bastard who hates America and put our brave men and women at risk with his heinous slander of pointing out what the U.S. was doing there. Joseph Darby, like Sen. Durbin, is a doubleplus ungood enemy of the state...

In a related bit, Fred also writes a response to overzelous quoters of Godwin's Law.

Jesus christ, you can't take back everything you say with teary eyes because O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Malkin, and all the rest of the right wing noise machine are bullying you.

Please people, in the '08 primaries, vote for somebody with some balls.

Unlike a great many congressional Democrats, he has not only been consistently critical of the administration, but his voting record has solidly backed up those criticisms. Unlike the CYA voting performed by most senators, he has voted against the patriot act, against the Iraq War Powers, all at times when it was DEFINITELY politically unpopular to do so, namely directly after 9/11.

So I don't want to hear "this guy is a disgrace" when he's trying to minimize the damage from an obvious attempt to redirect the thrust of his testimony on the senate floor AWAY from military prison abuses and toward a discussion of whether or not US troops are actually nazis, which is patently false to begin with, yet is aided by people calling Durbin a pussy for "apologizing."

He said this stuff on the senate floor for a reason. He is not a grandstander-- he said it because it's happening and should be stopped. If anything Democrats should stand behind him, not just say, "he said it, not me".

I acknowledge Durbin has been better than most, but clearly many of the Gitmo torturers (along with Dick Cheney and several other bigs) could've thrived in theThirdReich).

note that i didn't have a problem with the guy before, nor his previous actions or his stances. i just have a problem with a guy from a political party, one which has been systematically weak in response to reactionary bullshit for about 4 years now, finally giving in and compromising his entirely valid remarks.

All of this against an Admin which doesn't tolerate questioning of any sort or even any diverging on their specific platform; one that claims to have it all covered, impling that the public doesn't need to worry about anything and oh yeah FUCK YOU for even THINKING about questioning something they have declared thru holy fiat.

the thing is, they'll take ANY comments made from anyone and immediately deluge the speaker in reactionary on-air bullshit in an attempt to obscure any discussion about the issue at hand. they don't give a fuck about being shameless or disingenious.

At some point, somebody other than Howard Dean just has to reply with a "no, fuck y'all, i ain't budgin'," and weather the storm for a coupla newscycles. And hell, guys who do will even get attacked for that.

http://www.andrewsullivan.com/index.php?dish_inc=archives/2005_06_19_dish_archive.html#111936758855476867

"When you read the account Durbin was citing you notice an important thing: the detainees were thoroughly dehumanized, robbed of any personal dignity, left in extremes of heat and cold, shackled, covered in their own urine and excrement, with one having apparently torn parts of his hair out, and left without food or water for up to 24 sleepless hours. Durbin could have quoted worse incidents - and there are many, far worse cases - but he wanted to ensure that his incident was testified by an FBI official. The moral question that Durbin is absolutely right to raise is a simple one: two years ago, would you have ever believed that the United States would be guilty of such a dehumanized treatment of a prisoner in its care? If the particulars had been changed, would you have believed that such a thing could have happened in a totalitarian regime's prison? Does the way in which human beings have been completely robbed of dignity, treated cruelly and turned figuratively into "barking dogs" shock your conscience? The moral question is not simply of degree - how widespread and systematic is this kind of inhumanity? It is of kind: is this the kind of behavior more associated with despots than with democracies? Of course it is. When a country starts treating its prisoners like animals, it has lost its moral bearings"

which reminds me of the Dosteovsky quote, something about how you can tell what a nation is like by how it treats its criminals.

yes - and that is the RIGHT fucking answer.

I know, it's just O'Reilly. But still.

of course, this last time was only 3 months ago, but still, who can be expected to remember anything before the terri shaivo thing?

also, this shit never changes.

S 654 and HR 952 are two similar bills, the first in the Senate and the second in the House. They would ban extraordinary rendition: sending people to other countries where we know they might be tortured: countries like Uzbekistan, Syria, and Egypt. ... It's an odious practice, and should be stopped. But both of these bills will die without more popular support. It is up to us not to let that happen.

U.N. Officials Seek Guantanamo Bay Visit
By BRADLEY S. KLAPPER, Associated Press Writer
43 minutes ago

GENEVA - U.N. human rights investigators, citing "persistent and credible" reports of torture at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, urged the United States on Thursday to allow them to check conditions there.

The failure of the United States to respond to requests since early 2002 is leading the experts to conclude Washington has something to hide at the Cuban base, said Manfred Nowak, a specialist on torture and a professor of human rights law in Vienna, Austria.

"At a certain point, you have to take well-founded allegations as proven in the absence of a clear explanation by the government," Nowak said.

However, he added: "We are not making a judgment if torture or treatment under degrading conditions has taken place."

Washington's response is delayed because the U.S. review process is "thorough and independent" and involves the Bush administration, Congress and the judicial system, said Brooks Robinson, spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to U.N. offices in Geneva.

"The main point is that their request is being addressed and discussed and reviewed in the United States," Robinson told The Associated Press. "That process is underway."

But one investigator, Algerian magistrate Leila Zerrougui, said: "The time is up. We have to act now. If not, we won't have any credibility left...."