Friday, June 17, 2005

Sen. Dick Durbin's comments

Elected to the Senate in 1996, Durbin was chosen by his Democratic colleagues in December as Democratic whip, the second-highest position for the minority party.

The other night, he made the following statement, in talking about Guantanamo Bay.


On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. 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. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor. 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 happened 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.




No Democrat has spoken out against these OUTRAGEOUS statements. Rather, some actually support him. Since apparantly no one knows their history lessons anymore, allow me to recite some facts. There is absolutely no comparison between American soldiers serving their country, and these mass murderers.


Pol Pot in Cambodia killed one to three million (or between a quarter and a third of the country's population). On April 17 Phnom Penh falls. Within days the city's entire population of over two million is marched into the countryside at gunpoint. Pol Pot declares 'Year Zero' and directs a ruthless program to "purify" Cambodian society of capitalism, Western culture, religion and all foreign influences in favour of an isolated and totally self-sufficient Maoist agrarian state. No opposition is tolerated. Foreigners are expelled, embassies closed, and the currency abolished. Markets, schools, newspapers, religious practices and private property are outlawed.

Members of the Lon Nol government, public servants, police, military officers, teachers, ethnic Vietnamese, Christian clergy, Muslim leaders, members of the Cham Muslim minority, members of the middle-class and the educated are identified and executed. Towns and cities are emptied and their former inhabitants are deemed "April 17th people" or "new people". The country's entire population is forced to relocate to agricultural collectives, the so-called "killing fields". Inmates exist in primitive conditions. Families are separated. Buddhist monks are defrocked and forced into labour brigades. Former city residents are subjected to unending political indoctrination. Children are encouraged to spy on adults.

An estimated 1.5 million are worked or starved to death, die of disease or exposure, or are summarily executed for infringements of camp discipline. Infringements punishable by death include not working hard enough, complaining about living conditions, collecting or stealing food for personal consumption, wearing jewellery, engaging in sexual relations, grieving over the loss of relatives or friends and expressing religious sentiments.

Khmer Rouge records from the Tuol Sleng interrogation and detention centre in Phnom Penh (also known as S-21) show that 14,499 "antiparty elements", including men women and children, are tortured and executed from 1975 to the first six months of 1978. Only seven of those detained at the centre will leave it alive. At least 20 other similar centres operate throughout the country. Terror and paranoia reign, reaching a climax in 1977 and 1978 when Pol Pot launches a bloody purge against the "hidden enemies, burrowing from within" and the Khmer Rouge cadres turn on themselves. At least 200,000 are executed.




Hitler - Over the days of 9-10 November, the Nazis orchestrate the Kristallnacht (Crystal Night) pogrom. Jewish shops, houses and synagogues across Germany are burnt by both the Schutz-Staffel (SS) - the 'Blackshirts', Hitler's personal guard - and the general population. Ninety-one Jews are killed. Thirty thousand are arrested and deported.

In Germany the physically handicapped, mentally ill, and others with so-called "worthless lives" are rounded up and sent to designated hospitals, where they are killed. Referred to by the Nazis as mercy killing and planned by Hitler's office and the Reich Interior Ministry, the "euthanasia" program will claim up to 275,000 lives when it goes into full swing. the Nazis complete the planning for the Endlosung (Final Solution), the extermination of the Jews, Gipsies, Slavs, homosexuals, communists, and other "undesirables" and "decadents" in death camps run by the SS and controlled by the Gestapo.

About six million European Jews die in the following 'Holocaust'. Most (about 4.5 million) of those killed come from Poland and the Soviet Union. About 125,000 are German Jews. The Holocaust also claims about 500,000 Gipsies, between 10,000 and 25,000 homosexuals, 2,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, up to 3.5 million non-Jewish Poles, between 3.5 million and six million other Slavic civilians, as many as four million Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 1.5 million political dissidents.


Stalin - killed approximately 20 million, including up to 14.5 million needlessly starved to death. At least one million executed for political "offences". At least 9.5 million more deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the 'Gulag Archipelago' never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the 'Gulag'.

In the Ukrainian Republic up to five million peasants starve to death in the "famine" of 1932-33 when the state refuses to divert food supplies allocated to industrial and military needs. About one million starve to death in the North Caucasus. By 1937, the social upheaval caused by the "revolution from above" has resulted in the deaths of up to 14.5 million Soviet peasants. All told, about one million are executed, in that will come to be known as 'The Great Terror', 'The Great Purge', or the 'Yezhovshina' (after the head of the NKVD, Nikolai Yezhov). At least 9.5 million more are deported, exiled or imprisoned in work camps, with many of the estimated five million sent to the Gulag never returning alive. Other estimates place the number of deported at 28 million, including 18 million sent to the Gulag.

Stalin personally orders the trials of about 44,000 and signs thousands of death warrants. He also ends early release from work camps for good behaviour. 1937 - On 30 July the NKVD issues Order No. 00447 setting out the "means of punishment of those to be repressed, and the number of those subject to repression." The operation is to begin on 5 August and be completed in four months.
"All kulaks, criminals, and other anti-Soviet elements to be repressed are to be divided into two categories," the order stats. "
a) The first category are the most hostile of the enumerated elements. They are subject to immediate arrest, and after their cases have been considered by a three-person tribunal (troika) they are TO BE SHOT. "
b) In the second category are the other less active though also hostile elements. They are subject to arrest and imprisonment in a camp for 8 to 10 years, and the most evil and socially dangerous of these, to incarceration for the same period in prison, as determined by the three-person tribunal."
The order then lists the numbers of individuals from regions around the Soviet Union to be "subject to repression". 75,950 are to be executed and 203,000 exiled. At the same time, the purge of the Red Army begins. The purge results in the execution, imprisonment or dismissal of 36,671 officers, including about half of the 706 officers with the rank of brigade commander or higher. Three of the army's five marshals and 15 of its 16 top commanders are executed.

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