Home | Away

Monday, June 20, 2005

Hannity, Hewitt call for torturing Dick Durbin

Prominent conservative commentators Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity today called for the torturing of U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D.- Illinois), in response to Durbin’s much-remarked denunciation of torture early last week.

Speaking on the Senate floor last Tuesday, Durbin read from a statement written by an FBI agent, describing the conditions under which Americans have been holding detainees in the war on terror.  The statement included graphic accounts of prisoners chained hand and foot on the floor, urinating and defecating on themselves while chained in a fetal position for 18 to 24 hours or more.  Durbin then said:

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 been done 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.

In response, Fox News analyst Hannity sharply criticized Durbin, saying, “this guy’s trying to tell us that torture is un-American!  So why does Dick Durbin hate America?  Listen, our founding fathers fought and died so that we could torture our enemies around the world, including people we think might be our enemies or might become our enemies.  Maybe a few months in Gitmo will give Dick Durbin a deeper appreciation of America’s freedoms, and I for one would be happy to ship him there.”

Conservative blogger Hugh Hewitt concurred, writing that “the vast, vast majority of Americans” have decided that “Durbin is a pathetic and repulsive political hack who should exit immediately after a lengthy and detailed apology.”

Hewitt was especially incensed by Durbin’s citation of a letter written to him by former Florida congressman and Vietnam POW Pete Peterson, which read,

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.

“Peterson’s probably one of those Democrat Kerry-vets,” said Hewitt, “the kind who was never actually in Vietnam, and then lied himself into getting a couple of purple band-aids.  He and Durbin need to be chained hand and foot for a couple of days.  Let’s show these weasels and slimeballs that America doesn’t have a place for people who say that America shouldn’t practice torture.  Besides, why are we making all this fuss about a couple of prisoners defecating on themselves?  I defecate on myself all the time.  It’s not a big deal.”

In a related development, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz pointed out that many of the detainees in U.S.-controlled prisons had helped to plan the attacks of 9/11, and that many more have vital information that might prevent terrorist attacks in the future.  “These are people who can save lives if only we apply the right pressure,” Dershowitz said on Hardball with Chris Matthews.  “I have no doubt that the intelligence we’re getting from them has helped us defuse innumerable dirty bombs throughout the United States, often with only one second left on the little LCD ‘countdown clock’ that terrorists always attach to their homemade explosives.  There’s no question in my mind that if we weren’t torturing, maiming, and killing these people, we’d never get access to the vital information we need to keep America free.”

Thanks to Jeralyn Merritt, Billmon, and Roy Edroso, fine Americans all.  And hey, folks, that first Hewitt quote is for real.  You can look it up.

Posted by Michael on 06/20 at 08:32 AM
(24) Comments • (1) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 1 of 1 pages