Spot-on editorial re: Durbin's comments

[central scrutinizer]

My local fish wrap nails it - the Republicans always attack the messenger to distract from the message.

http://www.registerguard.com/news/2005/06/23/ed.edit.nazi.0623.html

excerpt:

Godwin's (Internet) Law holds that the likelihood that someone will compare something being discussed with Hitler or the Nazis increases the longer the discussion lasts.

A corollary to Godwin's Law is the well-known tradition in the Internet's Usenet newsgroups that once a person in a discussion thread invokes the comparison to Hitler or the Nazis, the thread is ended and the person who made the comparison has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

<snip>

It was a terrible mistake because it allowed the White House and its Republican cohorts to bury the ugly truth Durbin revealed under an avalanche of distortion, deflection and manufactured outrage.

Let's hope Senator Durbin's public apology on Tuesday means he has learned an important lesson about criticizing the Bush administration's deplorable record of prisoner abuse: It's not what you say, it's how you say it that's important.

[Warpy]

1. Baloney. The apology was the mistake.

He should have carefully crafted their type of apology: restate his original truths in unctuous language and handed them THAT.

Sure, he freaked them out. The truth always freaks them out. "What? Somebody NOTICED what we were up to? OHMYGAWD! Call out the pundit squad!"

It's time to tell the truth and shame the devils and watch them panic. Yes, they're going to scream. That's a good thing.

[Village Idiot]

2. I completely agree, but for a different reason:

It is a FACT that CIA / FBI / US Military Intelligence learned much of their counterintelligence and interrogation techniques from former Wehrmacht officers in the Gehlen Organization in the 1940s and 1950s.

Why then, should it be a surprise to ANYONE that these same counterintelligence and interrogation techniques resemble NAZI techniques?

No one in Washington D.C. - neither Republicans nor Democrats want to open the Pandora's Box that is the recruitment of Reinhard Gehlen by the US Intelligence Services after WWII and the staffing of his organization with former Wehrmacht, SS and Gestapo officers...

[bemildred]

3. Yes. Watch how Dean handles that sort of bullshit.

Dean sticks to his message and doesn't let anybody throw sand in his eyes.

[zbdent]

4. Fatboy should have been taken out of the national debate

at the first use of "Feminazi" . . .