Mundanely Profound

From Daily Kos in the context of Senator Durbin's recent controversial remarks.

A quote by Avi Schlaim, an Israeli historian, on the issue of comparisons to Nazi Germany (in this instance referring to Israeli government and military leaders, but the parallel works here as well):

The issue isn't whether or not we are the same as the Nazis, the issue is that we aren't different enough.


If we're in the process of creating a hierarchy of improper state-supported detention and torture and we're creating a scale from 1 to 10, where any number above 0.0 is something that should never be done by any civilized country ever, then Nazi concentration camps are an 11.0 and Gitmo is say... 0.8. If sadistic torture of prisoners is / was practiced and encouraged and if the Gitmo prisoners are imprisoned as long as the war on terror is being conducted, is it no mere POW camp or detention facility, it is more awful than that, and approaching, though far FAR from equaling, a Nazi regime. I declare myself guilty of overblown rhetoric. But U.S. policy towards enemy combatants is not different enough from the Nazis right now.


An excerpt of an FBI report from Senator Durbin's speech:

"On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold....On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor."

This is not as medieval as Saddam's torture techniques. And yes, I was probably lumping together both Gitmo and Abu Gharib in my screed, bascially because the same interegators and trainers were shared between those facilities. From what I have heard, Gitmo prisoners were not treated as badly as those at Abu Gharib. But people have died in both facilities and they probably died in slow and painful ways. You've seen the Abu Gharib photos, right? Are you going deny what you have seen with your own two eyes? The guy with the bag on his head, standing on a platform with wires attached to his body? The naked pile of prisoners smeared in their own shit? The nightmarish wide grin of the female soldier and she poses by a photo of a clearly dead detainee. Are you adopting the conservative line that despite whatever evidence comes down the line, it's okay because "we're not as bad as Saddam"? Abu Gharib was the EXACT SAME FACILITY that Saddam used to torture people! Same geographical space. And rather than set an example by closing down Saddam's torture chambers, which seems to be the failsafe reason we went to war when evidence of no WMDs resurfaces again and again, we kept them open, and continued to torture and kill people! Let's go back to my ratings of facilities exemplifying the enjoyment and acceptance of torture and killing.

Gitmo - 0.8
Abu Gharib - 2.0
Saddam's prisons - 5.0
Nazi concentration camps - 11.0

Okay? I hate rating it this way, but Gitmo is not AS BAD as a concentration camp. But according to my moral view, anything past 0.0 on this thereotical scale is unacceptable.

And finally I mostly get upset at Powerline because of the conservative personalities that are exemplified by their rhetoric. Lyon, I've already provided you with clips and excerpts that I have observed on their worldview. They have drawn a line that have said almost all Democrats and liberals are aiding terrorists. I will be the first to admit that I'm reading Powerline through a liberal filter, but those guys have already demonstrated through their words and actions that they have a mentality behind their words and statements that I can't treat as a legitimate political view. A banner ad for an "I Love Gitmo" t-shirt on their blog? Okay, you're conservatives promoting a stupid conservative message. But telling readers to wear a shirt close to their heart? It goes beyond political discussion to being just plain obnoxious and have absurdly misplaced priorities on supporting actions that help our troops.

[exhale]