The Durbin philosophy
Military investigators did not substantiate major charges of prisoner abuse contained in one FBI agent’s e-mail that was read on the Senate floor by Minority Whip Richard J. Durbin as an example of U.S.-sanctioned torture at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The unnamed FBI agent wrote that she saw one al Qaeda suspect lying in his own excrement, that he had pulled out his own hair and that he had no food and water. The female agent also said he was shackled to the floor and subjected to loud rock music and to extreme temperatures.
Mr. Durbin, of Illinois and the Senate’s No. 2 Democrat, read the e-mail June 14 in a speech attacking the Bush administration. He then likened Guantanamo interrogation techniques to the Nazis, Josef Stalin’s prisoner gulag, Pol Pot and the internment of Japanese during World War II. He later issued an apology on the Senate floor.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner, Virginia Republican, rebuked Mr. Durbin in a Senate debate for reading, as fact, a raw FBI report, the charges in which had not yet been investigated.
That investigation was completed last week by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, who commands the 12th Air Force, the air component of U.S. Southern Command, which oversees the 520-inmate prison at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo.
Gen. Schmidt wrote in his report, “Another FBI agent stated she witnessed a detainee short shackled and lying in his own excrement. The [investigation] was unable to find any documentation, testimony, or other evidence corroborating the third agent’s recollection to this allegation or her e-mail allegation that one of the detainees had pulled his hair out while short shackled.”
The Schmidt report also said, “We discovered no evidence to support the allegation that the detainees were denied food and water.”
IOW, Senator Durbin waxed indignant (not to mention insulting) about an incident that at the time had not yet been investigated. Facts be damned. Let me repeat: at the time of Durbin’s disgusting comparisons of our troops to the Holocaust, Pol Pot’s murderous regime, and the Russian gulag, this incident had not yet been investigated.. Durbin’s philosophy seems to be that if there is a perceived wrong that has been committed by our military and/or the administration, the way to handle it is to accuse them of already being guilty of it, regardless of whether or not it has been investigated. That way, by the time the full story comes out, no one will care outside of the ones who were falsely accused and their supporters – and of course the MSM will give the FULL story no significant airtime, leaving the original accusation out their hanging for those who either want to believe the worst about our admin and military or those who don’t follow the news as closely as you or I do.
In fact, that seems to be a philosophy his fellow Democratic House and Senate members subscribe to also, as the manufactured Plamegate scandal shows (at least in terms of an ongoing investigation, in which Democrats have already drawn their conclusions and accused Rove of guilt, in spite of the fact that the investigation is ongoing – read: not complete).