"ORGANIZED REPUBLICAN BROUHAHA"

The surest sign that Democrats think the Republicans are vulnerable is Dick Durbin's refusal to back away from his comparison of Gitmo and the practices of U.S. personnel there to the Nazis, the Soviets and Pol Pot. It appears to me that the Dems believe what Durbin and others like him are saying is what they think Americans want to hear.

This guy actually returned to the floor of the Senate tonight to repeat what he said Tuesday evening and claim that he what he said was legitimate.

He slightly tweaked his statement, almost imperceptibly.

Check out this spin on the Durbin disgrace from the Chicago Tribune.

In the face of an organized Republican brouhaha over his remarks, Durbin was unrepentant Thursday. He maintained that the Bush administration bears responsibility for creating the conditions that led to the mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo by saying they were not subject to the Geneva conventions.

Returning to the Senate floor Thursday night, Durbin re-read his original statement, saying he wanted his colleagues to understand the context of his remarks. "It has been nothing short of amazing," he said of the reaction.

"Was I trying to say `isn't this the kind of thing we see from repressive regimes?' Yes. This is the kind of thing we expect from repressive regimes and not from the United States," said Durbin, in response to hostile questioning from Republican Sens. John Warner of Virginia and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Warner called Durbin's comparisons "a grievous error in judgment."

"Organized Republican brouhaha"? What is that? It took absolutely no organizing for any decent American to be repulsed by Durbin's remarks. Of course, there was outrage.

The fact that Durbin considers the reaction to be "amazing" shows how out of the mainstream he and his Dem comrades are. They don't get it.

For a United States Senator to say the U.S. is engaging in the "kind of thing we see from repressive regimes" like those of Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot is indeed a "grievous error in judgment," as Sen. John Warner said.

The "organized Republican brouhaha" should give Durbin and the whackjob Dems pause. By mid-afternoon yesterday, when Rush Limbaugh revealed Durbin's comments to a national audience, word of his reprehensible rhetoric spread across the country and people reacted--SPONTANEOUSLY. This was no organized, months in the planning, kind of thing. It was a reaction to the inexcusable and misinformed comparison made by Durbin.

FOX gave this account of Durbin's Thursday remarks:

WASHINGTON — After a barrage of criticism, Sen. Dick Durbin went to the Senate floor Thursday evening to repeat a controversial statement he made two days earlier and insist he said nothing objectionable.

In remarks first expressed on the Senate floor late Tuesday and then re-read verbatim on Thursday evening, Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, read the report of an FBI agent who described treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

...Following those remarks, the Illinois senator clarified that he was not comparing U.S. soldiers to Pol Pot, Nazis or Soviet guards, but was "attributing this form of interrogation to repressive regimes such as those that I note.

"If this indeed occurred, it does not represent American values. It does not represent what our country stands for, it is not the sort of conduct we would ever condone ... and that is the point I was making. Now, sadly, we have a situation here where some in the right-wing media have said that I have been insulting men and women in uniform. Nothing could be further from truth," Durbin said, following up under questioning by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that he does not know if the interrogators cited in the FBI report were Americans or not.

Durbin is lying. He's trotting out the old "vast right wing conspiracy" explanation to cover up his own short-comings.

From the Congressional Record--Senate, on June 14, 2005:

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.

These are Durbin's exact words. He directly connects the actions of Americans to tactics employed by Nazis, Soviets, and Pol Pot. He most certainly owes the men and women of the American military and their families an apology.

Durbin won't admit that all of the abuses that have occurred during the nearly four year war on terror cannot be compared to the horror that took place under brutal regimes.

"Under Pol Pot's regime, 1.5 million died in death camps and another 200,000 so-called "enemies of the state" were executed. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews and forced hundreds of thousands into slave labor. The USSR's Joseph Stalin sent 25 million people to labor camps where many were worked to death."

Not one prisoner has died at Gitmo. NOT ONE!

Do Americans want to hear a U.S. Senator put our military and the Bush administration in the same league as Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot?

I don't think so.

The Democrats do.