Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, under fire for his comments about American interrogators using Soviet or Nazi-style tactics to break enemy prisoners during interrogations, apologized for the comments.
Another critic of Guantanamo Bay and the ridiculous “legal limbo” status quo has been silenced.
His comments, when put back into context, are not nearly as bad as they were made out to be. See the Congressional Record on his full speech and accompanying FBI documents that he quoted.
There are some lessons to be drawn from this situation.
The entire controversy is an example of an age-old political tactic to get others to lose face. Both Democrats and Republicans enjoy employing it against one another for leverage and for maximum effect on their political enemies. Some recent examples:
Does anyone remember Kerry’s voting for the $80 billion military bill before voting against it? He said those words and the Republicans used it to maximum effect in their ads. Does anyone remember Bush saying the war couldn’t be won during the Presidential debate with Kerry? Same damned thing. Both sides used the other’s words against each other with great effectiveness.
This is also an example of politicians obsessed with the word “Nazi.” They call each other Nazis, they call groups of people Nazis, they refer to this or that as Nazi. Politicians should stop abusing the word. “Nazi” is synonymous with utter evil. So if members of Congress wish to use the word as a weapon but can’t take the heat that follows, they should get out of the kitchen, because they WILL get burned badly.
Durbin’s apology has effectively ended the food fight; the argument that Durbin was trying to advance (as found in the FBI report) was lost as the food fight progressed.
Here's a 2004 speech from Durbin on treatment of Iraqi prisoners. Though it's a year old, it is still valid today.
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