Paging Dick Durbin

A revelation of sorts in the left-wing dishrag... even if it only appears on page A15...

Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said they opposed closing the center.

"I feel very good" about the detainees' treatment, Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, said.

That feeling was also expressed by another Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska.

On Monday, Senator Jim Bunning, Republican of Kentucky, said he learned while visiting Guantánamo that some detainees "even have air-conditioning and semiprivate showers."

Another Republican, Senator Michael D. Crapo of Idaho, said soldiers and sailors at the camp "get more abuse from the detainees than they give to the detainees."

In the last month, several senators, including some Republicans, have suggested that Congress should investigate reports of abuses at the detention center or that the military should close it to remove a blot on the country's image.

(hat tip: Tom Maguire) As Maguire's pal Orrin Judd noted, the Democrats must be reading the poll numbers and realizing that the average American does not really care about whether there's abuse of Korans at Gitmo.

Hey, I don't know whether I should take these statements any more seriously than Durbin's, except that (1) at least these Senators were on the ground at the prison and (2) didn't use stupid over-the-top references to dead dictators. I don't really care about Koran abuse, but legit claims of abuse need to be investigated and, if true, the abuse needs to stop. We all have differing ideas of what constitutes abuse, but we can probably all agree on certain things being out of bounds. unfortunately for Durbin and his ilk, he basically forestalled (if not ended) serious debate about the treatment of detainees in order to score cheap political points -- and he didn't even get those.

As this former Vietnam POW's story makes clear, it's not a good idea to compare the treatment at Gitmo to the more awful practices at other places...

The detainees at Guantanamo receive new Korans and prayer rugs, and the guards are instructed not to disturb the inmates' prayers. Compare this with my experience in February 1971, when I watched as armed men dragged from our cell, successively, four of my cell mates after having led us in the Lord's Prayer. Their prayers were in defiance of a January 1971 regulation in which the Communists forbade any religious observances in our cells. Does Mr. Durbin somehow argue that our behavior is the equivalent of the behavior of the Communists?

Actually, I was one of the lucky ones. At another camp, during the time I was being interrogated in the summer of 1969, one man was tortured to death and several were severely beaten. In fact, according to Headquarters Marine Corps, 20 percent of my fellow Marines failed to survive captivity. Have 20 percent of the Islamo-fascists failed to survive Guantanamo?

The argument that detainees at Guantanamo are being treated badly is specious and silly. In the eyes of normal Americans, Democrats believe this argument because, as Jeanne Kirkpatrick said 20 years ago, they "always blame America first."

Some things don't change. Maybe that's the only real comparison between today's Iraq War and Vietnam -- the Democratic base still can't bring itself to take their country's side.