Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist kept the heat on Dick Durbin yesterday, demanding that Minority Leader Harry Reid push Durbin to apologize to the American military and the Senate in a formal apology while in session. Reid rejected that request, stating that he stood by Durbin and his remarks:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist yesterday demanded that Sen. Richard J. Durbin make a "formal apology" on the floor of the Senate for comparing U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazi and Soviet regimes and that he strike his remarks from the Congressional Record.

In a letter to Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, Mr. Frist, Tennessee Republican, said previous bids by the Senate's No. 2 Democrat to clarify his remarks didn't go far enough.

"Subsequent statements by Senator Durbin indicate only that he was regretful if people misunderstood his remarks," Mr. Frist said. "We do not believe his remarks were misunderstood."

In fact, Reid's office attacked Bill Frist's remarks as "pathetic", a phrase which Reid never used in connection to Durbin's equating the American military with Nazis, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Reid never said a word to disassociate himself with that analogy, and now considers a request for an apology to be contemptible. It points out an odd set of priorities for the leader of the Democratic Party in the Senate -- he gets more offended by a letter than he does with his deputy calling American servicemen murderous thugs.

The Anti-Defamation League's Abraham Foxman pointed out that the last two Senators to make stupid Nazi analogies in the Senate, Rick Santorum and Robert Byrd, both got up and offered apologies in session, and wondered why Durbin couldn't even bring himself to actually apologize -- rather than "regret" that people misunderstood him. Chuck Schumer refused to respond, ignoring reporters' questions about the ADL's statements after trying to defend Durbin's non-apology statement.

Unfortunately, the Democrats have received reinforcements from the lunatic Left, who think that calling our troops Nazis is just fine as long as it involves criticizing George Bush. Case in point: the serially demented Minneapolis Star-Tribune editorial board, which not just excuses Durbin's statement but practically seconds it:

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., set off a firestorm last week when he compared U.S. treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo to practices employed by Nazis, Soviets, Pol Pot and their ilk. His remarks were condemned by the White House, the Pentagon, the Christian Coalition, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Newt Gingrich (who called for his censure by the Senate) and by the entire right side of the talk radio/television/blog world. The heat got so bad that, late in the week, Durbin apologized if his remarks had been "misunderstood." They weren't, and Durbin should not have apologized.

Instead, the senator should have hit back hard, just as the Amnesty International did when its comparison of Guantanamo to the Soviet gulag was attacked. By caving in, Durbin did just what the orchestrated right-wing smear effort required to succeed: It made him the story rather than focusing further attention on the outrageous violations of international law and human rights being perpetrated in Guantanamo and elsewhere in the name of the American people. ...

Durbin was spot on in his assessment of Guantanamo. That's why he was so roundly attacked. He told the truth.

Remember, this is a meme for the Left that goes back forty years. It's practically a dogmatic belief for them that the American military is no better than the enemies it faced, probably ever. It's part of the multicultural moral equivalence that has turned a respectable philosophical discipline -- liberalism -- into a form of mind rot that the American Left exemplifies. Whether it is John Kerry equating Vietnam veterans to the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan in his stentorian Boston tones or Durbin picking up the hat trick in the Senate by using Nazis, Soviets, and the Khmer Rouge all wrapped up together, they want to argue that any kind of interrogation that results in uncomfortable conditions equates to the deliberate physical torture and slaughter of millions.

Why does the Left need to argue this? They want an end to the fighting, regardless of what that means to American security. They want a return to the failed policies of the 1990s, when we treated terrorism like an international crime, and for a couple of reasons. First, they want the US to give up part of its sovereignty to the UN and the World Court in order to impose on the US policies that they cannot achieve through the ballot box domestically. Second, they value the veneer of reasonableness over the reality of what it takes to keep the nation secure, and if we get attacked, they want the holiness and martyrdom that comes from being a victim. Why else do they stand on their soapbox and bemoan the loss of the "sympathy" given to us on 9/11? That, to them, is the pinnacle of achievement.

Well, fine for them, but I'm not gambling my security and my family's survival just so they can wallow in victimization. If Durbin and the Democrats insist on standing by their assessment of American military personnel as Nazis and worse, then they can feel victimized at the ballot box.

UPDATE: Power Line has a letter from Col. Joe Repya, a soldier's soldier from my town, who has a suggestion for the Strib's lunatics:

As a soldier in Iraq, I was highly insulted by the comments of Senator Durbin and his pathetic excuse of being "misunderstood." So I offer a suggestion. Let's divide up these victims of "the hellhole America's military has created" at Guantanamo and allow them to spend a weekend at the homes of the Star Tribune Editorial Staff and Senator Durbin. America's military will anxiously await the report on the impression they will make on you and your families.

As long as our Minnesota National Guard could ensure that the Islamofascists couldn't escape into the Twin Cities, I'd second this motion.

UPDATE II: Ed Driscoll notes that Durbin hasn't always been unmindful of the effects of partisan rhetoric on enemies abroad. However, in this instance, I'd qualify that point by noting that some in the GOP were specifically impugning Bill Clinton's motives in shooting missiles at the Sudan, not comparing the action to Nazis or Stalin. (In fact, they were comparing him to a movie, Wag The Dog.) Ed's point is worth noting, but isn't strictly analogous to this situation, where Durbin is criticizing the conduct of the war by calling the military administration of Camp X-Ray reminiscent of cocentration camps run by genocidal regimes.

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