Let’s time, from this moment, how long it takes to find an article where the Downing Street Memo is referred to as “Downingate.”
PAD
Let’s time, from this moment, how long it takes to find an article where the Downing Street Memo is referred to as “Downingate.”
PAD
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http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:h4tuyUiYPRcJ:annezook.com/+Downingate&hl=en&client=firefox-a
This is the only hit on Google for it. I suppose you’ll be the second.
This is a good thing, actually since it signals the end of a cliche (albeit a useful cliche.) Now if we can just get everyone to stop calling anyone who disagrees with them Hitler we’ll know that common sense is just around the corner.
Actually, the speculation I’m hearing is that from now on people may be starting to use “Street” as the new scandal suffix instead of “gate”…
Actually, I’ve often seen it referred to as “memogate”.
Now you KNOW the people running the Watergate cringe every time gate is attached to some scandal. Which is ironic, because once the gate was attached, ya’d think there would be a way out…
You get slightly more hits if you double up the G: DowningGate.
Did we already have a “Memogate”. I like that name better.
“Now if we can just get everyone to stop calling anyone who disagrees with them Hitler we’ll know that common sense is just around the corner.”
Except that Common Sense seems to have a good running start on many, many people….
I thought memogate was the “Osama determined to strike in the US” memo.
Ryuukuro wrote: “Now if we can just get everyone to stop calling anyone who disagrees with them Hitler we’ll know that common sense is just around the corner.”
Yeah, well that corner just keeps getting farther and farther away, it seems.
Just yesterday, minority whip Sen. Ðìçk Durbin (D-Ill.) bizarrely compared U.S. military guards at Guantanamo Bay to guards in Nazi concentration camps, guards at the Soviet gulags, or Pol Pot’s murderous thugs.
Is it just me, or does it seem that key Democratic leaders like Howard Dean, Durbin and a few others are going out of there way to alienate everyone except extreme leftists?
I’m ashamed now to admit I voted for Durbin, but I guarantee I won’t ever make that mistake again.
“…a Senate speech Tuesday, Durbin raked Bush administration officials over the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. He read an account by an unnamed FBI agent of the alleged treatment of a prisoner who was “chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water.” The prisoner, the agent said, had been subject to extremely hot and cold temperatures, and loud rap music.”
“And then Durbin said this: “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime–Pol Pot or others–that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.”
R, Maheras,
Your point? Sounds just like something you’d expect at a Russian gulag or Nazi concentration camp to me.
-BBayliss
Set the clock.
Let’s time, from this moment, how long it takes for Peter David to comment on the Downing Street Memo by saying BUSH SUCKS.
From reading the actual text of his words, I’d say Durbin is spot on. I don’t think he’s necessarily trying to appeal to anyone. He’s trying to make the point that the tactics employed by US personnel in Guantanamo is completely abhorrent. Now if you disagree with that, that’s your prerogative. I happen to agree with him.
Troll-Ray: I’ll do it for him. Bush sucks.
Clock is off.
“Your point? Sounds just like something you’d expect at a Russian gulag or Nazi concentration camp to me.”
Adolf Hitler – About 9 million dead in camps
Soviet gulags – About 2.7 million dead
Pol Pot – About 1.7 million dead
Gitmo – zero dead
Gitmo – five instances of Koran abuse by prison guards
Gitmo-15 instances of Koran abuse by prisoners.
By overstating the case people are making it a whole lot easier to ignore the actual abuses that have occured.
Perhaps I was not suffiantly generous with the gulags level of achievement. From the LAt Times editorial page, courtesy of Yale professor David Gelernte:
Ignorance of history destroys our judgment. Consider Sen. Ðìçk Durbin (D-Ill), who just compared the Guantanamo Bay detention center to Stalin’s gulag and to the death camps of Hitler and Pol Pot — an astonishing, obscene piece of ignorance. Between 15 million and 30 million people died from 1918 through 1956 in the prisons and labor camps of the Soviet gulag. Historian Robert Conquest gives some facts. A prisoner at the Kholodnaya Gora prison had to stuff his ears with bread before sleeping on account of the shrieks of women being interrogated. At the Kolyma in Siberia, inmates labored through 12-hour days in cheap canvas shoes, on almost no food, in temperatures that could go to minus-58. At one camp, 1,300 of 3,000 inmates died in one year…
At least Durbin has taken the heat off of Howard dean and made him look like a model of quiet sanity.
“Under Stalin an estimated 10 million were sentenced to forced labour in the camps (GULAGS) in the period between 1934 and 1947 alone. These prisoners were suspected of crimes against the State (anything from political dissidence to failure to co-operate with Stalin’s collective program.)”
Sounds JUST like Gitmo to me.
Yeah because we would know if abuses were happening at Gitmo… oh, wait. I guess since travel to Cuba is severly restricted by the self-same government that runs Gitmo, we wouldn’t would we? Unless Amnesty International says so… oh, wait THEY DID.
One e-mail from an unnamed FBI agent, and Durbin goes into Hyperbole Land?
The Red Cross has access to GITMO 24/7 at their discretion. About 1,000 journalists have visited GITMO to date, as have lawyers for the detainees, and nearly 100 members of Congress. This place is under a microscope.
Anyone, and I repeat anyone, who compares the soldiers at GITMO with those monsters Durbin cited, either has no knowledge of history, or they are so hateful of the current administration they have completely lost the ability to think for themselves.
R. Maheras:
Here’s another comparison for you.
>One e-mail from an unnamed FBI agent, and Durbin goes into Hyperbole Land?
Ever heard of Deep Throat? He was in the news recently. He was an unnamed FBI agent too, ya know.
Bill, I think you’re totally missing the point.
Sure, Gitmo isn’t as bad as the gulags and the concentration camps…yet. The point is, the abuse carried out by the guards is what you’d expect from a gulag…and unless we do something now to stop it, it’s going to continue. No deaths at Gitmo…that we know of. If these are the abuses that we know about, there must be know that are still successfully hidden.
Durbin didn’t call Gitmo a gulag, but it sure is convienent to attack his message by twisting his words to say that. We should all take his warning for what it is, and demand action and accountability from our government without delay.
Or someday your list may look something like this:
Adolf Hitler – About 9 million dead in camps
Soviet gulags – About 2.7 million dead
Pol Pot – About 1.7 million dead
Gitmo – 500,000 died in “detention,” never having been charged or convicted of anything
Gitmo – Total religious abuse and persecution
What the point is here is that ONE instance of abuse is one too many. Period. So, simply because the US hasn’t engaged in the systematic torture and/or elimination of millions of people (leaving the 19th and early 20th centuries out of this discussion), doesn’t make it OK for our representatives to have tortured one, five, three hundred thousand people. We are the United States of America, last I looked, and we should be better than that. PERIOD.
Well said K-nuck!
Did I miss the part where it said that every prisoner, every day, was put under these same conditions? Did I miss the part where this specific instance was put into some kind of context? Did I miss the part where someone showed how many thousands of prisoners have been worked to death at Gitmo? Because surely there’s some evidence of gross, regular, indiscriminatory abuse at Gitmo, instead of perhaps the necessary application of targeted techniques and/or punishments specifically and measuredly applied by professionals operating under interogation guidelines established years ago by international conventions. This issue involves two separate problems that shoudl be addressed individually: 1) the reason these prisoners are being detained and 2) their treatment while being detained.
>interogation guidelines established years ago by international conventions.
Good God, man, don’t EVEN go there. Gitmo is the prime example of what the Geneva Convention was trying to AVOID.
Knuckles sort of preemptively responded to me, as I didn’t refresh while typing that in. Ironically, I will say I do agree that we have to be held to higher standard than other countries, but I would debate what’s abuse and what’s acceptable techniques to elicit a desired response, assuming that’s a possible context of what Durbin’s referencing.
Ok, I hate to come off like some kind of hardline SOB, but folks, international convention do not eliminate all forms uncomfortableness for those being interogated, and without knowing why this specific detainee was being treated this way, it’s awfully hard to start making assumptions.
I’m not simply saying we need to be held to a higher standard, I’m also saying that WE need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.
And I apologize for the annoying use of capitals, but that’s what happens when you can’t use bold type.
First off, i wish it was called “Downinggate” because at least then it’d get more press. I hate that the so-called “liberal media” let’s the administration get away with just ignoring it.
Secondly, we don’t know if anyone has been killed at Guantanamo. And as Knuckles said so brilliantly, even one abuse is too many.
Let’s not forget that everything is entangled with everything else, so when Rep. James Sensenbrenner uses his power to gavel down a hearing on the Patriot Act without observing rules of order or just stating he doesn’t want to hear about abuses at Gitmo he’s wrong.
The real solution for all these things is to inform your friends and vote! Let’s get us to a paper trail and vote these idiots out of office!
Michael
Oh right… because nobody has been “worked to death” at Gitmo, only tortured by methods that any red-blooded free-thinking American would abhore, it’s ok. Torture is ok as long as it’s only a couple of people. Torture is just fine and dandy because we haven’t killed as many people as Hitler or Stalin. In fact, I think that’s the new Republican Mantra: “America! Not as bad as Stalin!”
Anyone who criticizes Durbin’s words either didn’t listen to them, or really does feel guilty about something. Durbin was absolutely spot on. If someone had read that FBI report to me and not told me where it was taking place, I would not have thought of America first. I would have thought of Nazis or Stalinists or something, but not America. That was the entire point of Durbin’s speech. There was nothing “bizarre” about it.
To me, America is not about torture. It’s a dámņ shame that so many Americans apparently disagree. But then, I’ve been reading the reports from our American prison camps, whether it be Gitmo or Iraq, and seeing the same thing Durbin did. These tactics are not American. They go against every ideal America stands for. If you are against torture, then stand with Durbin. If you actually like torture, then go ahead and criticize.
Jason, the Bush administration has explicity said that the Geneva conventions, which are intended to assure that prisoners are not abused by their captors (put another way, to make sure that captives are afforded the basic human rights the international community feels all people, including your enemies, are entitled to). Rumsfeld personally approves on a weekly (ok, maybe monthly) appropriate “stress techniques” that our “interrogation professionals” are allowed and sancitoned by our government to use…including piling captive, naked and bound, and then exposing them to pictures of naked women (which is a combition of things most muslims would consider to be torture).
Our government condones the use of torture on prisoners…and this isn’t some mythical scenario where a nuclear missile is streaking to some US city, and we have hours to find out where it is. Or did I miss the part where some imminent, horrible threat is facing the US that could possible justify the use of torture on prisoners?
“what’s abuse and what’s acceptable techniques to elicit a desired response” this sentence highlights exactly WHY torture never works…because the interrogator tells the prisoner what they want to know. Expose someone to enough torture, and they’ll tell you anything you want them to, just to get you to stop. But that doesn’t mean that what they tell you is the truth, or accurate, or even useful. All it does is prove that you’re willing to fall to sub-human levels to break another human being.
GITMO isn’t a Watergate; it isn’t Treblinka; it isn’t a gulag, and it isn’t Cambodia under Pol Pot. GITMO is probably more closely monitored and less dangerous to detainees on a daily basis than any normal maximum security prison anywhere in the world. And that isn’t hyperbole.
“GITMO isn’t a Watergate; it isn’t Treblinka; it isn’t a gulag, and it isn’t Cambodia under Pol Pot. GITMO is probably more closely monitored and less dangerous to detainees on a daily basis than any normal maximum security prison anywhere in the world. And that isn’t hyperbole.”
The problem with that above statement (aside from comparing Watergate to Treblinka), is that it is disproven on a daily basis. And that isn’t hyperbole.
R., all that may be absolutely true…
And yet it does not excuse for one instance the daily abuses of basic human rights that go on there, especially when those abuses are not only allowed by our government, but they are ordered.
Japanese concentration camps during WWII aside, the US used to be able to speak and act from a higher moral position, where equality and basic human rights actually meant something. This adminstration has taken that reputation and sullied it, maybe beyond recovery. Now, we’re just another bully that talks a good talk about peace and tolerance, but when it comes down to it, we’re just a bully, falling back on thuggisnenss when there’s no one else around to check us.
Let’s not forget that everything is entangled with everything else, so when Rep. James Sensenbrenner uses his power to gavel down a hearing on the Patriot Act without observing rules of order or just stating he doesn’t want to hear about abuses at Gitmo he’s wrong.
It’s more than just that, Michael:
Mr. Sensenbrenner decided that he didn’t like how the meeting was going and criticized the witnesses who came and gave their testimony to the committee. He then stood up and left (taking his gavel.)
As he was leaving the microphones were switched off while continued discussion was going on.
GITMO isn’t a Watergate; it isn’t Treblinka; it isn’t a gulag, and it isn’t Cambodia under Pol Pot. GITMO is probably more closely monitored and less dangerous to detainees on a daily basis than any normal maximum security prison anywhere in the world. And that isn’t hyperbole.
Zimbardo prison experiment. If you aren’t careful to avoid that, you’re in danger of falling into it. And normal maximum security prisons are ALWAYS in danger of that because people ignore the lessons from that.
http://www.dembloggers.com/story/2005/6/10/54149/5115
Here’s the fun link of the video of Sensenbrenner’s meltdown.
Just to bring everyone up to speed….
Stanford Report, August 22, 2001
Thirty years later, Stanford Prison Experiment lives on
BY MEREDITH ALEXANDER
Thirty years ago, a group of young men were rounded up by Palo Alto police and dropped off at a new jail — in the Stanford Psychology Department. Strip searched, sprayed for lice and locked up with chains around their ankles, the “prisoners” were part of an experiment to test people’s reactions to power dynamics in social situations. Other college student volunteers — the “guards” — were given authority to dictate 24-hour-a-day rules. They were soon humiliating the “prisoners” in an effort to break their will.
Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment of August 1971 quickly became a classic. Using realistic methods, Zimbardo and others were able to create a prison atmosphere that transformed its participants. The young men who played prisoners and guards revealed how much circumstances can distort individual personalities — and how anyone, when given complete control over others, can act like a monster.
“In a few days, the role dominated the person,” Zimbardo — now president-elect of the American Psychological Association — recalled. “They became guards and prisoners.” So disturbing was the transformation that Zimbardo ordered the experiment abruptly ended.
Its story, however, endures, achieving a level of recognition shared by few other psychological experiments.
“Japanese concentration camps during WWII aside…”
Forget ye not the German detention camps, Italian detention camps, forced relocation of American Indians, forcible (and illegal) seizure of Indian lands…Our moral high ground isn’t very high at all. But that isn’t the point. The point is that we, as Americans, should be striving every day to make those expectations a reality. And a huge part of that should be not excusing torture simply because “it’s war.” It’s at times like this that it is absolutely necessary that we occupy the moral high ground. We’ve completely lost it around the world, and all the stupidass hijinks of morons like Sensenbrenner just make it worse. Let’s hold ourselves accountable for our actions, before we start pointing the finger elsewhere.
To get somewhat back on track in this thread, I realized I had never read the actual memo. I went out and found a copy and present it here for further discussion.
SECRET AND STRICTLY
PERSONAL — UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
(Prime Minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy adviser)
From: Matthew Rycroft (Manning’s aide)
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson (Cabinet secretary), John Scarlett (chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee), Francis Richards (head of the “signals intelligence establishment,” an intelligence agency that reports to the foreign secretary), CDS(chief of defense staff, Adm. Sir Michael Boyce), C(Sir Richard Dearlove, the chief of the MI6 Secret Intelligence Service), Jonathan Powell (chief of staff), Sally Morgan (director of political and government relations), Alastair Campbell (head of strategy)
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) assessment. Saddam’s regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.
The two broad US options were:
(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.
The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:
(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.
(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.
(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.
The Defence Secretary (Geoff Hoon) said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary (Jack Straw) said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General (Lord Goldsmith) said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC (U.N. Security Council) authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR (U.N. Security Council Resolution) 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.
On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.
John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.
The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.
Conclusions:
(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.
(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.
(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.
(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.
He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.
(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.
(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.
(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)
MATTHEW RYCROFT
Page A – 20
Here’s one, sort of: Downing Street Memo Gate?
Bobb wrote: “And yet it does not excuse for one instance the daily abuses of basic human rights that go on there, especially when those abuses are not only allowed by our government, but they are ordered.”
First of all, I dispute your phrase “daily abuses” of basic human rights. That sounds like Amnesty International blather. AI, in my opinion, is fast becoming the PETA of human rights abuses. For example, in its 2005 report, AI cites, along with the U.S., countries like Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, France and many other seemingly civilized nations, as hotbeds of human rights abuses. By some of AI’s standards, a steelworker, logger, coal miner, fisherman, farmer or GI in Iraq are being abused just struggling through their normal, everyday jobs. AI should realize that not everyone has the luxury of working in temperature-controlled offices where the most hazardous threat is a paper cut or open file cabinet drawer.
Second, I agree that bonafide abuses in GITMO should not be tolerated. I never said otherwise.
As far as your bully argument goes, let’s not ever forget who was first attacked here. We have every right to defend ourselves, and to take prudent steps to ensure we are not attacked again. We are dealing with an adversary who follows no rule of law whatsoever, and, if able to do so, would completely destroy us without a whit of remorse.
16 May, 1918
The U.S. Sedition Act
SECTION 3. Whoever, when the United States is at war, shall willfully make or convey false reports or false statements with intent to interfere with the operation or success of the military or naval forces of the United States, or to promote the success of its enemies, or shall willfully make or convey false reports, or false statements, . . . or incite insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, or refusal of duty, in the military or naval forces of the United States, or shall willfully obstruct . . . the recruiting or enlistment service of the United States, or . . . shall willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States . . . or shall willfully display the flag of any foreign enemy, or shall willfully . . . urge, incite, or advocate any curtailment of production . . . or advocate, teach, defend, or suggest the doing of any of the acts or things in this section enumerated and whoever shall by word or act support or favor the cause of any country with which the United States is at war or by word or act oppose the cause of the United States therein, shall be punished by a fine of not more than $10,000 or imprisonment for not more than twenty years, or both….
First of all, I dispute your phrase “daily abuses” of basic human rights. That sounds like Amnesty International blather. AI, in my opinion, is fast becoming the PETA of human rights abuses. For example, in its 2005 report, AI cites, along with the U.S., countries like Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, France and many other seemingly civilized nations, as hotbeds of human rights abuses.
What are your sources as compared to Amnesty’s sources. Seriously.
SnarkyJerk: WTF?? Are you insinuating that we are all treasonists?
Anyone who criticizes Durbin’s words either didn’t listen to them, or really does feel guilty about something.
Or, alternate aswer C, disagrees with you and thinks they were foolish in the extreme. I’m surprised this possibility did not occure to you.
Oh right… because nobody has been “worked to death” at Gitmo, only tortured by methods that any red-blooded free-thinking American would abhore, it’s ok. Torture is ok as long as it’s only a couple of people. Torture is just fine and dandy because we haven’t killed as many people as Hitler or Stalin.
Google “Straw man argument” and see what you come up with. Generally not emplyed by those who are confident in their argument.
If you actually like torture, then go ahead and criticize.
Ah, so to disagree with Mr Durbin is to be pro-torture. I see.
Bobb,
Durbin didn’t call Gitmo a gulag, but it sure is convienent to attack his message by twisting his words to say that.
Ok, here’s his words:
If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others —that had no concern for human beings.
I think you can argue that he is not calling Gitmo a gulag just that it is being run like a gulag…which is a subtle distinction but a distinction, I’ll grant you.
I well remember the scene in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago where they subjected the prisoners to loud Christine Aguilera music, an atrocity that haunts us all to this day.
I’ll say it again for the less careful readers out there: By overstating the case people are making it a whole lot easier to ignore the actual abuses that have occured. You can take from that the idea that I “like torture” or think that nothing wrong has occured at Gitmo…or whatever. Won’t change reality, which is that Durbin has just made it harder to see justice done. Critics of Gitmo can now be more easily lumped in with the looney left where, sadly, some will feel well at home.
“16 May, 1918
The U.S. Sedition Act”
And the point is….?
This act was repealed in 1921. And besides which, if you’re trying to suggest that it allows the use to hold prisoners at Gitmo or anywhere else, since they aren’t US citizens, US law has no jurisdiction over them. So, even if the Espionage Act had not been repealed, it would not grant the US any legal authority to hold prisoners indefinitely.
R., defend ourselves, yes, even take forceful action to do so. What threat do the Gitmo detainees pose, that they need to be exposed to torture? And if there’s some imminent danger that justifies the use of extreme measures, where’s the reports of the foiled next 9/11? Of the 24-like plot that our use of torture revealed?
Simply because our enemy in this instance holds the lives of others in so little regard, must we also lower ourselves to their standards? And you say “prudent” measures. Seems that simply detaining them would be prudence enough…those detainees are not free to plot against us, make bombs, kill. We’ve already neutralized them.
I’m sorry, but those all sound like the words a cultured bully attempting to justify his use of barbaric means.
“Ah, so to disagree with Mr Durbin is to be pro-torture. I see.“
Absolutely. Did you read what Senator Durbin actually said? Do you seriously think that the behavior described by the FBI agent is acceptable? If you answered “yes” to both questions, then you are undeniably pro-torture, and in my opinion, that makes you unAmerican to the extreme.
No Straw Man involved in this. It’s a simple matter of whether or not you have any human decency at all. Anyone criticizing Durbin who actually paid enough attention to Durbin to understand what he said is clearly pro-torture.
“I’ll say it again for the less careful readers out there: By overstating the case people are making it a whole lot easier to ignore the actual abuses that have occured. You can take from that the idea that I “like torture” or think that nothing wrong has occured at Gitmo…or whatever. Won’t change reality, which is that Durbin has just made it harder to see justice done. Critics of Gitmo can now be more easily lumped in with the looney left where, sadly, some will feel well at home.”
The real disconnect here is that you think he’s overstating the case, and I do not think he is. What he said was not that it is being run like a gulag. What he said, verbatim, was:
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime—Pol Pot or others —that had no concern for human beings.”
His reaction is one of disbelief. A reaction that says “This shouldn’t happen in America. This doesn’t happen in America. This happens in places like Saddam’s Iraq, the former Soviet Union, Nazi Germany. Not America.” And now we are learning that the reality is something different. I don’t think he was out of line at all.
Bill, I see your point. I don’t necessarily agree.
How should Durbin have approached this? The “US troops are abusing some detainees” at Gitmo wasn’t getting the point across. The longer this goes on, the longer the public allows the government to continue with this, the worse it will get. By injecting into the discussion the analogy of much worse historical situations, Durbin appears to be doing the responsible thing.
Sure, there will be those that will try to distract from the main concern by saying “how dare you compare this country to Nazi Germany!” And there will be those that lump Durbin in with the loonies. But there will also be an increasing number of people that recognize that response for what it is: distraction from the very real issue of abuse conducted by this administration on detainees.