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Dick Durbin set himself apart in the Senate on Tuesday by proclaiming that one could not tell the difference between the behavior of detainees at Gitmo by American military person and that of Nazis, Stalin's gulag guards, or Pol Pot. Despite a national furor over his remarks, Durbin has refused to retract them, although he laughingly added yesterday that it was wrong to think that he had minimized the horrors of the Holocaust and the gulags by equating them with a lack of climate control and indoor plumbing in Gitmo interrogation rooms.
However, in his zeal to protect America from the Creeping New FascismTM of American servicemen, Durbin somehow missed an opportunity to find similar horrors much closer to home. John in Carolina notes that Durbin's political ally and fellow Democrat in Chicago, Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan, operates a jail that sounds like it has a lot more problems than Gitmo or anything else run by the American military.
Let's see if we can guess where the following abuses took place -- Gitmo or Cook County:
In one incident, an elite squad of 40 guards took over a maximum-security [unit] ... for the sole purpose of beating and terrorizing the prisoners. A jail investigator determined that the guards' misconduct was covered up by ... medical personnel, who filed false reports and refused or delayed treatment to the prisoners, and by the ... inspector general, who refused to cooperate with the investigation. In the other incident, five inmates in a special incarceration unit ... alleged that they were beaten by 20 or more ... as they lay cuffed and shackled on the floor.
Was that done in the sunny climes of our Cuban installation? No -- that happened in Sheahan's Chi-town jail, in 1999 and 2000. Durbin's pal promised that his jail would improve and that reports of torture and abuse would stop. And they did, mostly because unlike the whistleblowers at Abu Ghraib who were lauded for their efforts to end the isolated cases of abuse at that prison, Sheahan made sure he got rid of the squealers at the Cook County lockup.
Let's try this again. Gitmo or Cook County:
[A] prisoner ... said he was beaten unconscious by guards who had wrapped handcuffs around their fists to make the beating worse. ... Several days later, the whites of his eyes were nearly obscured by the red from blood vessels that had ruptured during the beating, and deep lacerations were held together by staples that had been applied to his scalp. Late last year ... another prisoner ... told of being dragged by several guards through a fire of burning paper and debris that had been raging in the cellblock. His account of this abuse was substantiated by blisters and deep burn marks on his leg.
Now that sounds like what Saddam did on off days when he wasn't feeling all that dastardly -- so this had to have happened at Gitmo, right? Wrong. That's still Durbin's pal Sheahan's Cook County lockup. Why hasn't Durbin taken to the floor of the Senate to decry this treatment? One would think that a man who wants to protect America from the taint of torture and abuse in order to ensure our purity might start in his own back yard.
We'll start taking Durbin seriously when he calls for the National Guard in Illinois to take over the Cook County Jail and demands a federal investigation of his political ally Michael Sheahan, for years of allegations involving abuses much more profound than anything contained in that silly e-mail Durbin read on the floor of the Senate on Tuesday. Until then, chalk up Durbin's feigned moral outrage to the worst kind of political opportunism.
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» No complaints about the A/C here. from CrosSwords
Dick Durbin, Senator from Illinois, and giver of aid and comfort to the enemy, made a point of noting how terrible the treatment of prisoners at Gitmo is. The man considered the 20th hijacker was subjected to all kinds of torture: loud music, too muc... [Read More]
Tracked on June 17, 2005 7:18 AM
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John Podhoretz ... [Read More]
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On Tuesday, Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) had this to say on the floor of the Senate:
When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred there—I almost hesitate to put them in the RECORD, and yet they have to be added to this de... [Read More]
Tracked on June 17, 2005 8:22 AM
» The Meltdown Continues from The Right Track
Can the Dems do anything nowdays without looking like anti-American zealots? It doesn’t seem so. Dick Durbins comments yesterday on the quality of treatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, show a mind seriously divorced from reality. Captain Ed over at... [Read More]
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Tracked on June 17, 2005 9:52 AM
» Wanted: Gutsy college student to take on Dick Durbin from The Flag of the World
By now, I hope you've heard Senator Dick Durbin's disgusting comments (scroll down most of the way) comparing the actions of guards at the detention center in Guantanamo to those of Nazi prison guards--and guards at Soviet Gulags, and those at Pol Pot'... [Read More]
Tracked on June 17, 2005 10:22 AM
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UPDATE II/6-17: Cap'n Ed delivers up two more delicious Durbin morsels this morning.
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» Obscenity from The Q Speaks
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Tracked on June 18, 2005 11:58 PM
» Durbin Gets Head Stuck in Barrel of Political Bazooka, Squeezes Trigger! from The Right Place
Senator Dick Durbin (Moonbat-IL), is still trying to find the door out of the lower level of the two-story outhouse where he ingeniously imprisoned himself Tuesday night on the floor of the United States Senate!
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Tracked on June 19, 2005 4:52 AM
» When Senator Durbin met Sheriff Sheahan from John in Carolina
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Tracked on June 19, 2005 1:34 PM
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