Culture War Dispatches

from a Progressive People's Republic

Thursday, February 07, 2008

The Dick Durbin Pol Pot Connection, 2

Dick Durbin’s comparison of the U.S. at Guantanamo and Pol Pot has been out of the news for a while, so he’ll be gratified by today’s Globe editorial which mentions him and then goes on to make the colossally idiotic statement regarding our waterboarding three known terrorist leaders: “The Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany, militarist Japan, Pol Pot - this is the roster that Bush wants the United States to join.” See, they all condoned waterboarding, so do we, so that puts us on the same “roster.” There might be some pathetic logic if the Globe had made the case that these were the only four regimes in history to use waterboarding. This is doubtful, but even so, what about the many far more odious torture techniques used by any number of countries? The French in Algeria, perhaps? Why not write about the U.S. wanting to join the same roster as…France? And what about handcuffs? Pol Pot used handcuffs. American police use handcuffs. Is this Pol Pot handcuff roster really one our men in blue want to join? And wait, if I recall correctly, the Nazis used jail cells with locked doors. So does the Cambridge Police Department. Bunch of Nazis!