The Weeks Review

FROM WACO TO GUANTANAMO
The Left's Mercurial Speech Standards

After the debacle at Waco (you remember, the David Koresh nutjobs that were transformed into crispy critters by the Janet Reno Justice Department) Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA referred to the "jack booted thugs" of the ATF in a fundraising letter. I can still hear the squeals from the left in defense of our noble government agents who were being unfairly tarred with the hideous label which alluded to Nazi stormtroopers. That was 1992, Bill Clinton was president and the individual who hurled the allusion was, politically, well right-of-center.

The bare facts of the matter are that approximately 80 people were incinerated in Waco, people who were only guilty of following a psycho with a messiah complex - this was not exactly a high water mark for Federal law enforcement. Setting the details of incident at Waco aside though, Mr. LaPierre's allusion was unfortunate, even in the context of a fund-raising letter, which is often given to hyperbole. There are far too many dedicated government agents who risk, and often lose their lives in the service of their country to be generalized in such a manner.

President George H.W. Bush resigned from the NRA in protest of LaPierre's characterization and Republicans from all quarters arose to denounce LaPierre's intemperate phrase.

My, how times have changed. Now we have Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) comparing the treatment of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay to the treatment of the victims of the Third Reich, the Soviet Gulag and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Unlike Mr. LaPierre's clumsy allusion, Sen. Durbin's words are concise and to the point:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here
[at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional]
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

So, when will Sen. Durbin's Democrat colleagues in the Senate stand up and publicly disavow these noxious comments? Well, I don't believe they will. It seems that the more time that goes by, the more shrill and hysterical these people become. The "Bushitler" and Nazi imagery that has long been a staple of the radical left has obviously taken deep root in those who were once thought to be mainstream - the two are now almost indistinguishable. Sadly, Democrats, in general, are beginning to look as though their hatred for George W. Bush is greater than their love for their country. Just as "mainstream" Muslims refuse to stand up against their radical fringe and, in the process, become complicit in their excesses, so now are Democrats following their radicals over the edge of reason.

They claim to "support the troops" but they seem to never miss a chance to cast our forces and their mission in the worst possible light. Every defeat or miss-step is magnified and every victory is downplayed or ignored.

Does Sen. Durbin and his ilk not understand that much of this conflict is PR? Does he not realize that his comments, word for word, appear in Al Jazeera and simply fuel their anti-American propaganda machine? Is he so filled with anti-Bush hatred that he would scuttle our effort in the Middle-East, an effort that more than 1,700 of our men and women have died for, just to disgrace the president? Is he a traitor, or a fool? In either case, he is unfit to serve in the United States Senate.

Aside from the fact that I could give a damn (yes, that's right, I simply don't care) what they do to any of the detainees (terrorists/murderers) at Guantanamo Bay, the fact is that there is absolutely no correlation whatsoever between Gitmo and the mass-murderer's row of Hitler (6 million Jews alone), Stalin (15-30 million, at least) and Pol Pot (2 million, or 1/3 of the poulation) that the Senator calls to mind. If the Senator does not understand that, his ignorance of history is stunning. If he does understand it, his duplicity is so breathtaking that his resignation should follow.