Dick Durbin: Question is one of treatment, not location

[struggle4progress]

From the loud denunciations he provoked, you’d think that Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., had called President Bush a Nazi. The assistant minority leader’s speech last week was indeed a strong challenge to the Bush administration, but the context was quickly lost in the uproar over one paragraph. For readers who might like to see what the fuss is about, here’s a substantial portion of Durbin’s text. <snip>

http://www.startribune.com/stories/1519/5467069.html

[sofaman1]

1. I know that I'm going to get flamed...

his comment was out of line. Guantanamo isn't anything like a Nazi death camp, nor like one of the Pol Pot extermination camps, nor is it like one of the camps in the Gulag. I small amount of reading on these subjects would make it evident that the comment was outrageous.

We can disagree about the need for Gitmo, or whether we should have gone into Iraq at all. We can make known our outrage at the treatment of the "prisoners" at Gitmo. Durbin's comment, though, devalues the crimes of the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot.

Trying to remember who made the comment over the weekend...he said something to the effect that "whoever uses the term Nazi first, has lost the argument". And he's right...I will now don my asbestos suit...

[BrainRants]

2. Cheney's asbestos reform will not protect you! LOL!

The point is not that we're like the Nazi's, the point is that we're not different enough.

Either way, the Repubs have blown his statement WAY out of proportion.

[struggle4progress]

3. I posted a link to two pages of commentary. If you think the general ..

.. argument is wrong, you're welcome to argue that case.

But personally, I agree with Durbin that stories about detainees "chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water," who "urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more," in rooms deliberately made unbearably hot or unbearably cold, really do suggest "some mad regime .. that had no concern for human beings."

[sofaman1]

4. Happy to discuss this...

Fact is no-one has died there...coercion is an unfortunate fact of life in this instance. These people wish us harm. I don't think that's debatable. So we have to employ the means necessary to extract that info. These people do not play by the Geneva Convention (beheading), in fact, they couldn't care less about the Geneva Convention. They won't just volunteer the info we need. Plus, a duplicitous enemy will try and feed us mis-information. You have to break them down to extract the information that you need. It's an ugly business.
This is an unconventional war....and it's been going on for years.. It started with the hostages in Iran, went through the attack on the MC barracks in Lebanon, the 1st WTC bombing, the Kobar Towers, USS Cole, Nairobi & Kenya and, of course, 9/11. It's enough already...the only way to combat these attacks, is unconventionally. Unfortunately, Bin Laden and his ilk don't respond to "nice". To them "nice" is weakness. "Mercy" is not in their lexicon. This has been demonstrated time and again.

Lastly...Nazis were not trying to extract information. They were trying to exterminate a race. Pol Pot, was a reign of terror. Terrify people into submission by exterminating their own people. And the Gulags, existed to remove "enemies of the state", real or imagined, to terrify them into toeing the party line. Reading accounts by survivors of the Gulag are horrifying. Torture and starvation, in Siberian winters, in some cases, for years on end.

I refuse to accept the premise of Durbin's comment. It's unfortunate that he chose to make these comparisons because it undermines his argument.

[RuleofLaw]

5. Wow, so much misinformation to address

First, people have died at Guantanamo! No dispute about that.
'Two people were beaten to death'
http://www.channel4.com/news/2005/02/week_4/24_begg3.html

Second, there is absolutely no proof that all the people in Guantanamo are killers, wishing to kill all Americans. In fact, the problem is that the US really don't know who they have in custody. Remember the story about the children being held at Gitmo?

"Guantanamo may free children"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3172617.stm

Third, This "war" did not start with the hostages in Iran. The hostages in Iran was a result of the US support for the brutal regime of the Shah. The US had supported and sponsored one of the most repressive regimes in the world.

As for the others, its speculative at best to say they are all connected to the same group with the same motives.


Lastly, to say that the Nazi's did not try to extract information is just ludicrous. Tell that to all the members of the resistance movements in Denmark, Norway, France, The Netherlands, etc.

The Nazi's did far more that exterminate people. The Gestapo (Geheimliche Stats Polizei) was in charge if interrogation, not extermination (The SS took care of that).

Please inform yourself first.

As a last comment, Durbin was right on point with his speech.

[sofaman1]

6. ok...

I'll leave it that. I have a problem with Sen Durban's comment and with some of the comments coming out of the Democrat Party by Howard Dean & Dick Durbin, amongst others. I don't believe that this does anything other than "fire up the base". It certainly does not attract voters, like myself, who is looking for a political home.

As far as the "Two people were beaten to death" comment. This is the word of a former Bagram and Gitmo detainee who says that the deaths took place in Bagram, not Guantanamo. I find it fascinating and quite telling, that you are more than willing to take this fellow's word rather than the word of our own military.

Secondly, the people being held at Guantanamo were not brought there after being picked up for jay-walking in downtown Los Angeles. The people held there are not necessarily the innocents that you would have people believe. Not even Sen Durbin made this claim. Since these people were captured 'en flagrante", that would indicate that they are, at the very least, enemy combatants. We have, I believe, released people from Gitmo, case in point being the gentleman that levelled the accusation of beating deaths at Bagram.

Kids that were held at Gitmo, per the article you quote, were in fact combatants. Children are used as suicide bombers, couriers, etc. I don't like the idea of kids being incarcerated during this war anymore than you do, but the fact is that cultural mores are different when it comes to the safety of children.

You seem to indicate that support of the Shah constituted an act of war on our part, which makes no sense to me. Fact is that Americans were taken hostage by the Iranians, which I see as the beginning of a protracted war against the US, as evidenced by the many attacks on us spanning decades.

Your point about Nazis torturing resistance fighters is well taken. Those tortured by the Gestapo, I'm sure you'll agree, seldom lived to tell the tale, which is not the case at Gitmo. There is still not a single case of anyone being killed at Gitmo. However, you are indulging in hair splitting. The word the Senator used was "Nazis". Comparing the torture of the Nazis/ Gestapo to interrogations at Guantanamo is, factually incorrect, it's inflammatory and dishonest, not to mention completely irresponsible, imho.

Lastly, when telling someone to inform themselves you might want to make sure that your own points are factually correct and irrefutable or you risk looking foolish and insulting. Inflammatory statements such as Senator Durbin's, may make some people feel better, but it still remains dishonest.

[struggle4progress]

8. Durbin didn't claim anyone died at Guantanamo. But in the whole

developing gulag of US detention facilities around the world, where there are of the order of ten thousand prisoners, a hundred violent deaths are known to have occurred, and several dozen of these have been ruled criminal homicides by US investigators.

And it is actually difficult to get such a death ruled a hoimicide, as shown by an especially tragic instance in the news about a week ago -- a captive beaten to death by Americans who apparently knew he was innocent but didn't to be perceived as "weak." That this case was not counted as a homicide because the investigator decided the kid had so many injuries no one person could be held responsible for the death, a shameless and vacuous argument against prosecution of a lynch mob.

You claim coercion is necessary because "These people wish us harm." While I do not think that it is debatable that there are people who wish us harm, the question of whether the right people are inm custody remains -- and there is precious little evidence that most of the people actually in custody wish us harm. Approximately four of the people in Guantanamo have been charged with anything at all, and a number of people are apparently incarcerated there simply because their neighbors wanted to collect "reward money" from our military, regardless of the persons actual involvement in anything. In the case of Abu Ghraib, independent investigation showed that something like 60% of the prisoners were, in fact, guilty of nothing whatsoever -- if they were arrested for so much as jaywalking, there was no evidence of it. The CIA kidnapped Maher Arar in NY and shipped him off to Syria to be tortured for most of year -- with no good evidence at all. If, as you suggest, our gulag is populated with people who behead others, then by all means charge them. But the fact that no charges are forthcoming strongly suggests that your claims are wrong.

You assert "we have to employ the means .. to extract .. info." We have now some hundreds of years of experience with this slogan: "WE must torture the witches to discover their consorts," for example. By the time our Constitution was written, the philosophy of brutal interrogation had been discredited: sufficient maltreatment DOES indeed produce "confessions," which are usually worthless, thus explaining the provision against "self-incrimination" in our Bill of Rights.

You write: "a duplicitous enemy will try and feed us mis-information" and warn "To them 'nice' is weakness. 'Mercy' is not in their lexicon." I agree that there are people like this -- but I think your description best fits the crop of Republican liars who currently perch in Washington.

Tyranny arrives by degrees: it establishes itself one day at a time. When you support the system of secret prisons which are being established, when you are eager to agree that those imprisoned without a trial deserve it, when you are ready to gloss over the prisoners beaten to death or left degraded in their own feces and urine -- you declare clearly your allegiance to Satan.

[Catfight]

7. Why don't we let a survivor of the nazi camps visit Guantanamo

and make that determination? And of course he wasn't calling Bush a NAZI, no one is calling Bush a NAZI, I don't know why people keep saying he called Bush a NAZI, he never said anything that sounds even remotely like calling Bush a NAZI, so would people stop saying that he called Bush a NAZI! There's no resemblance to Bush and Hitler.










heehee...I learned real good how to do that from talk hate radio...hey hey, I'm real smart, I'm just like a repub. LOL