James Taranto's moral high ground

Hello, this morning I read a headline on the Drudge Report. It intrigued me so I clicked through and I found myself face-to-face with an article by none other than James Taranto. Yeah, that's what I thought too...who in the living hell is James Taranto? Well, he apparently lives on a plane of existence where Americans are all perfect, where we have unilateral, God given, rights to abuse any people we dislike and all of us can use the 9-11 trump card as an excuse to do pretty much anything we want, regardless of the Geneva convention or international treaties we've signed.

The headline in the Drudge read "Sen. Durbin [D-IL] took the Senate floor yesterday and likened American servicemen to Nazis..."

Now, of course that sounds compelling, even sinister. But wait, you're right, it is. Look at the actual article and you'll see how that headline is taken out of context to insinuate that Sen. Durbin, a Democrat, throws horrible labels around without thought and reason. He must be a monster himself to call our brave servicemen such awful things. Well, when you read the quote he presents from an FBI agent who was at Guantanamo Bay prison, you'll see why he used such harsh words.

At the end of the article, after which I myself was thoroughly convinced that if what the FBI agent saw and reported was true, we indeed are running and heartless, cruel, illegal and morally hypocritical prison in Cuba. Taranto pulls the 9-11 card out of his pocket though to justify this horrible mistreatment at the prison. If we as a country can't be decent and uphold even the basic tenants in our constitution, then who are we really? Who decides when it's okay to ignore our long standing standards of fairness?

America in WWII kept thousands of people of a certain race in a virtual prison camp in the middle of the desert for years. How much better are we really than those very same Nazis? Granted, we didn't excecute them by the droves, but our hands certainly aren't clean. And we've murdered millions of people over the years in the name of various expansionest and capitalist causes. I think Taranto better go back and read some real history books before his trump card starts to look a little tarnished.

Pearl Harbor, 9-11, yes these were great tragedies. But how long can we continue to use these unfortunate events as an excuse to throw out many of the freedoms we've fought for? To amble back to the original point...perhaps Mr. Taranto should take Sen. Durbin's comments in the context of prisons where it was intended. I believe the Senator is right. If we took away the rest of the story and just told people the actual things that were happening at this "unnamed" prison, we might be justified in thinking that it was happening in some third world, junta controlled, prison or a gulag from WWII or even, dare I say, a Nazi prison camp.

Just for kicks I'll quote the FBI agent as Sen. Durbin did in his speech on the Sentate floor.



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"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."
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By the way, some of the men in this prison have been there for 3 years or more without charges or access to a lawyer.

Worth noting is that later on in the article, in an unrelated section, Taranto goes on to talk about Mark Felt, who was recently exposed as "Deepthroat", the source of the inside information in the Watergate scandal. Taranto talks about how Felt was on the task force to uncover this secret source and he deliberatley misled the investigation. Taranto calls this behavior "morally ambiguous at best." Hmm, that's interesting, it's morally ambiguous to mislead a federal investigation, but he sees no problems, apparently, with the disturbing treatment of the prisoners at Gitmo.

As I continued reading the rest of his points among the varied topics in the article I realized that this whole piece was a clever way to jab at Democrats anyway he can. There's at least two mentions of Bill Clinton and his staff, and, of course, a story about the voting irregularities in the last presidential election. These neo-cons with their comforting little blinders on really make for some humorous reading don't they. I was certainly amused.