Normally a fan of the Trib Editorial Page, this one got me
We know what Durbin thinks about the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners. So what’s the proper treatment of our coverage-hungry senior senator when he displaces the ever-present microphone long enough to insert his foot in his mouth? Ignore him. That would be torture.
Nice and pithy and utterly obnoxious given the subject. Saying he screwed up is fine, that is what editorial boards do. However, distracting from a serious issue in which Durbin simply made a bad analogy is far worse of a stunt than anything Durbin said. This isn’t a typical media hound just trying to get attention–it’s a serious story and one that the news hasn’t covered very well. To it’s credit the Trib did mention it in an editorial, brought about by another report that they crticized.
Perhaps if the Trib and other news organizations were doing a better job keeping the issue in front of the public, we wouldn’t have to wait for someone to say something over the top to get the subject attention.
Making matters worse, Americablog points out the Ed Board left out important details about the description of events.
Trib Board:
He read an account by an unnamed FBI agent of the alleged treatment of a prisoner who was “chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water.” The prisoner, the agent said, had been subject to extremely hot and cold temperatures, and loud rap music.
Full Text of the description by Durbin:
On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. 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.
Of course, Kass makes even a pithier comment out of it, but Kass didn’t seem to read the actual speech either. On part stuck out to me:
Former Congressman Pete Peterson of Florida, a man I call a good friend and a man I served with in the House of Representatives, is a unique individual. He is one of the most cheerful people you would ever want to meet. You would never know, when you meet him, he was an Air Force pilot taken prisoner of war in Vietnam and spent 6 1/2 years in a Vietnamese prison. Here is what he said about this issue in a letter that he sent to me. Pete Peterson wrote:
From my 6 1/2 years of captivity in Vietnam, I know what life in a foreign prison is like. To a large degree, I credit the Geneva Conventions for my survival….This is one reason the United States has led the world in upholding treaties governing the status and care of enemy prisoners: because these standards also protect us….We need absolute clarity that America will continue to set the gold standard in the treatment of prisoners in wartime.
So a guy who went through it thinks differently.
Blogs are supposed to be the ones doing silly pithy posts about politicians, I’d hope the larger media would have the sense to know when it’s inappropriate.