Durbin slanders his own country

Mark Steyn writes in the Chicago Sun Times Throughout the last campaign season, senior Democrats had a standard line in their speeches, usually delivered with righteous anger, about how "nobody has a right to question my patriotism!" Given that nobody was questioning their patriotism, it seemed an odd thing to harp on about. But, aware of their touchiness on the subject, I hasten to add that in what follows I am not questioning Dick Durbin's patriotism, at least not for the first couple of paragraphs. Instead, I'll begin by questioning his sanity.

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Last Tuesday, Senator Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, quoted a report of U.S. "atrocities" at Guantanamo and then added: "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." Er, well, your average low-wattage senator might. But I wouldn't. The "atrocities" he enumerated -- "Not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room" -- are not characteristic of the Nazis, the Soviets or Pol Pot, and, at the end, the body count in Gitmo was a lot lower. That's to say, it was zero, which would have been counted a poor day's work in Auschwitz or Siberia or the killing fields of Cambodia.

Betsy blogged Mark Steyn is his usual magnificent self in ridiculing Dick Durbin. Once he's finished chopping Durbin down to Tom Thumb size, he takes on the Pat Leahy/Thomas Friedman argument that we should close down Gitmo simply because it is making people around the world angry at the U.S. If you are in need of a marker to figure out who is and who isn't serious about our nation's security and who has a realistic grasp of how the world works, just figure this. Anyone who argues that we should close Gitmo to get people to like us better is so hopelessly naive or so hopelessly lost in Bush-hatred that he or she should be denied any access to leadership in our foreign policy.

Marc @USSNeverdock blogged Absolutely spot on!

Scott @PowerLine blogged Mark Steyn's Chicago Sun-Times column on Turban Durbin states the case against the Senator with Steyn's characteristic bite: "Durbin slanders his own country."

As I indicated earlier I would urge that Gitmo be closed down and that all of the prisoners be transferred to the Cook County Jail, except I suspect it really would be against Geneva Conventions. Another possibility would be to let them go, but require them to run a down a line of widows from 9/11 armed with weapons so they could show how much they appreciated what these inmates had done.