The Tortured State of Discourse

Red and Blue Blogistan both are abuzz about Senator Richard Durbin's statement on the floor of the Senate yesterday in which, to the outrage of many Bush-supporters, he actually reviewed some of the practices being used in American prison camps outside of the US. The popular quote is

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here -- I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:

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.

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.

It's certainly shocking, although not the most shocking report of American prisoner mistreatment in the Global War on Terror (note: Iraqi terrorist groups' treatment of prisoners is a bit worse, which of course makes anything short of that okay). Blue Blogistanis are shocked at the torture; Red Blogistanis are appalled not by the torture itself, but by that last part, involving 20th-century European and Asian dictators.

Take P*w*r L*ne (no, please, take them). After listing the millions said dictators had killed, Paul M. reacted thus:

The big lie is nothing new in politics. Hitler and Stalin were master practicioners. What's unusual about Durbin's lie is that it slanders his own country. Normally that kind of slander is uttered only by revolutionaries seeking the violent overthrow of the government. Yet Durbin purports to be part of a loyal opposition.

What possessed Durbin to do it? How, after harping constantly on the importance of our image to winning the war on terrorism, could he cast the U.S. in such a false light? It's not likely that he intentionally set out to injure his country. Until I hear a better explanation, I'll put it down to a kind of sickness or derangement brought on by hatred -- of President Bush, the military, etc. -- coupled with a very weak immune system (i.e. intellect).

This reaction might make sense when you understand how differently Paul's blog "partner" John H. views torture at Guantanamo:

The mildness with which terrorist detainees have been treated stands as an imperishable monument to the greatness of the American spirit and the moderation of the Bush administration.

How's the koolaid taste, John? Add enough sugar to the blood?

In sharp contrast, Blue Blogistani Billmon's got it on the nose:

Exaggerating for political effect is a technique at least as old as Jonathan Swift.... Still, quantitatively and qualitatively, we're not even in the same universe as Stalin's paranoid empire.

But if Durban had wanted to be completely honest, he would have skipped the rhetorical flourish about the Soviets, the Nazis and the Khmer Rouge, and instead pointed out that if we didn't know better, we might think today's horror stories out of Guantanamo and Abu Graib and Baghram were tales told about prisons in El Salvador, Honduras and Argentina thirty years ago -- or South Vietnam, forty years ago.

And if he really wanted to get reckless with the truth, he could have explained the reasons for that resemblance.

But that's probably more truth than even Dick Durban can afford.

(Billmon's post via dailyKos.)

Durbin's full statement (in HTML) is here.