Representative Press Blog

"V the K" mocks, "Nothing wrong with equating uncomfortable air conditioning with genocide"

"V the K", there is something very wrong with what you are doing which is lying. Durbin did not equate uncomfortable air conditioning with genocide. He read from a declassified FBI memo detailing the treatment of Guantánamo Bay prisoners and asked "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.”

The document said that detainees were left for 24 hours “chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water,” "Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more." The memo further described a prisoner left overnight in an “unbearably hot,” unventilated room. “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,” the FBI reported.

and the fact is FBI Agent reports have Corroborated stories Guantanamo Bay Prisoners have told

At least 10 current and former detainees at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have lodged allegations of abuse similar to the incidents described by FBI agents in newly released documents, claims that were denied by the government but gained credibility with the reports from the agents, their attorneys say.

rmc complains "NOTHING in the above paragraph compares to the horrors of the Holocaust, the gulags or the Pol Pot regime."

Mrc,

You are either dishonest or you need a class in logic 101. Guys like you really damage public discourse when you misrepresent what someone has said. You keep jumping to the Holocaust, and other specifics. What Durbin said EXPLICITLY and SPECIFICALLY was "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.”

And Nazis and Soviets and others have done the same kind of things, not everything done by a Nazi was out and out gas chamber just as not every crime done by an American is out and out mass incineration of tens of thousands of civilians.
If you heard about horrible things being done, and Nazis and others have done horrible things to different degrees (not exclusively gassing), then you might assume that the horrible things were done by Nazis or some other oppressors.

There isn't anything unclear with what Durbin said. It is manipulative and dishonest to read into it and insist that only your illogical interpretation is correct and that therefore Durbin has committed an "offense". This is the ugliest of political games playing and it is simply dirty and dishonest tricks.