The Jump Blog

Dick Durbin impersonator that is.

Garrison Keillor is a consumate professional, a booster of Roots and Americana music, a fine radio host, an instinctual historian, and a fine author. He’s also a flaming Liberal (he is on NPR after all, it’s in the contract), a fact that I have chosen not to let bother me for several years.

Understand that this is no new thing with Keillor, he is an often vocal opponent of all things conservative and makes no bones about his Liberal –or what he surely terms Progressive– leanings. I have long suspected that his leaving the USA in 1987 and closing down A Prarie Home Companion had as much to do with Reagan as any desire to live abroad, though I can’t prove that.

With all of that he is nothing if not a knowledgable historian and capable researcher. Garrison certainly knows history. This fact makes his following piece nothing more or less than blatant intellectual dishonesty on a level that I simply can’t comprehend. I will link to the full article and pull the bits that I wish to address into block quotes.

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. This week, we have suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

This is simply intellectual dishonesty on a grand scale for several reasons, the primary one being –quite obviously– that the writ of habeas corpus applies to citizens of the United States. The recent legislation does nothing to affect the rights afforded to US citizens under the constitution nor does it strip any non-citizens of any previously held rights or assurances under that document.

It is neither a de facto or de jure suspension of habeas corpus.

BUT even if it were it would not be the end of human rights in America. On three previous occassions the writ of habeas corpus has been suspended for American citizens. Abraham Lincoln did it twice, once in 1861 and again in 1862. It was not reinstated until the year after the Civil War concluded in 1866. The third time was the unofficial suspension in 1942 by Franklin Roosevelt that allowed for the interment camps. Both of these were in wartime when the Chief Executive felt the need to exercise his executive privelidge in order to protect the country.

Neither were the end of the country and what the current President and Congress are enacting are far less than the other two executives who were faced with military conflicts that threatened the nation. I suspect that this is where Mr. Keillor and I see things differently. I doubt seriously that he believes the current Islamic threat to be equal to that posed by the Axis powers or secession.

The Senate also decided it’s up to the president to decide whether it’s OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file “enemy combatants” and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal.

Firstly I object to the characterization that detainees are routinely beaten as a matter of course. Secondly I object to the characterization that military tribunals run by Americans are nothign more than kangaroo courts. Thirdly, I reject the characterization –both in this paragraph and later in the piece– of bright lights, lack of clothing, temperature fluctuations, and loud noise as torturous activities. These are inconveniences and deprivations, not tortures.

If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it’s no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

Really, this is simply unimaginative and base hyperbole aimed at the emotions of readers. Does Mr. Keillor truly believe that refusing to extend rights guaranteed to citizens to enemy combatants puts us on the same moral footing as those who oppose us? Does Mr. Keillor truly believe that out actions are in any way analogous to the routine tourture and mutilation doled out by our enemies? Can anyone recall the last time that the word “capture” did not immediately bring to mind images of beheadings and multated, burnt corpses hung from bridge rails?

Is Mr. Keillor seriously suggesting that those are the same images that spring to the mind of the newly captured terrorist on his way to Gitmo? Of course not. The world over knows we do not use the same tactics as our enemies and to suggest that we do is an insult to every person in uniform that Mr. Keillor must either clarify or retract.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich

…

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It’s only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can’t trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Really, the Third Reich? Is Mr. Keillor quite prepared to stand up and defend his position that we are no better than the Third Reich? Beyond the blindingly fucking obvious point that we have been targeted for being a friend and ally of Israel as opposed to the oppresor and tormentor of the Jewish people (hey, we’re kind of fighting the people that want to do that Garrison, so choosing Jews was really, really shortsighted), there is no, repeat no, similarity between what even our worst have done at our lowest points and what occured in the prisons and camps of the Third Reich or the Gulags of the Soviet Union or in the death camps in Cambodia and to even suggest that there is is insulting in the highest degree to every man and women who currently wears the uniform.

It wouldn’t be nearly as odious were it not for the fact that Garrison Keillor knows all of this, but he is using these comparisons to express his moral outrage without caring about the fact that they simply are not apt and erode the moral supremecy that we do have over our enemies, and they are our enemies Mr. Keillor, make no mistake about it. You said that you would not send your college aged child abroad due to the recent legislation for fear of reprisal? Well, I hate to be the one to break the news to you but Americans abroad have been walking targets for Islamic terrorists for several years now and, frankly, are not safe in large chunks of the world due to the fact that our enemies want to kill us regardless of any legislation we have passed regarding detainee treatment.

They think we are the great Satan due to our support for Israel and need no other motivation beyond that one to wish to slaughter us wholesale and to attempt to fulfill that wish at every opportunity.

For the edification of those who wish to continue making the slanderous equivocations I reprint a comparrison made when Sen. Durbin went down the same path:

Let’s compare.

Nazi’s(from the transcript of the Nuremburg Trials)

“A prisoner captured while trying to escape was delivered in his cell to the fury of police dogs who tore him to pieces.”

See, we treated the prisoner like a dog, compared him to a dog, trained him like a dog, in the past we have even scared prisoners with dogs. The Nazi’s fed their prisoners to the dogs. Big difference there just ask our prisoner and then ask theirs. Oh, wait, you can’t. Dogs ate their guy.

“As a result of ill-treatment in eastern Prussia I was obliged to have my eyes looked after. Having been taken to an infirmary, a German doctor put drops in- my eyes. A few hours later, after great suffering, I became blind. After spending several days in the prison of Fresnes, I was sent to the clinic of Quinze-Vingts in Paris. Professor Guillamat, who examined me, certified that my eyes had been burned by a corrosive agent”

“M. Herrera was present at tortures inflicted on numerous persons, and saw a Pole, by the name of Riptz, have the soles of his feet burned. Then his head was split open with a spanner. After the wound had healed he was shot”

“Commander Grandier, who had had a leg fractured in the war of 1914, was threatened by those who conducted the interrogations with having his other leg broken and this was actually done. When he had half revived, as a result of a hypodermic injection, the Germans did away with him”

“”M. Robert Vanassche, from Tourcoing, states: ‘I was arrested the 22 February 1944 at Mouscron in Belgium by men belonging to the Gestapo who were dressed in civilian clothing. During the interrogation they were wearing uniforms …
“‘I was interrogated for the second time at C and in the main German prison, where I remained 31 days. There I was locked up for 2 or 3 hours in a sort of wooden coffin where one could breathe only through three holes in the top.’”

“M. Remy, residing at Armentieres, states: ‘Arrested 2 May 1944 at Armentieres I I arrived at the Gestapo, 18 Rue Francois Debatz at La Madelaine about 3 o’clock the same day. I was subjected to interrogation on two different occasions. The first lasted for about an hour. I had to lie on my stomach and was given about 120 lashes. The second interrogation lasted a little longer. I was lashed again, lying on my stomach. As I would not talk, they stripped me and put me in the bath tub. The 5th of May I was subjected to a new interrogation at Loos. That day they hung me up by my feet and rained blows all over my body. As I refused to speak, they untied me and put me again on my stomach. When pain made me cry out, they kicked me in the face with their boots. As a result I lost 17 lower teeth….”

“. . . as I would not admit anything, one of the interrogators put my scarf around my mouth to stifle my cries. Another German policeman took my head between his legs and two others, one on each side of me, beat me with clubs over the loins. Each of them struck me 25 times.:.. This lasted over two hours. The next morning they began again and it lasted as long as the day before. These tortures were inflicted upon me because, on 11 November, I with my comrades of the resistance had taken part in a demonstration by placing a wreath on the monument to the dead of the 1914-18 war….”

“18 August, sensitive parts were struck with a hammer. 19 August, was held under water; 20 August, my head was squeezed with an iron band; 21 and 24 August, I was chained day and night; 26 August, I was chained again day and night; and at one time hung up by the arms.”

“”Thursday, 15 June, at 8 o’clock in the morning, I was taken to the torture cellar. There they demanded that I should confess to the sabotage which I had carried out with my groups and denounce my comrades as well as name my hiding places. Because I did not answer quickly enough, the torture commenced. They made me put my hands behind my back. They put on special handcuffs and hung me up by my wrists. Then they flogged me, principally on the loins, and in the face. That day the torture lasted 3 hours.
“Friday, 16 June, the same thing took place; but only for an hour and a half, for I could not stand it any longer; and they took me back to my cell on a stretcher.
“Saturday the tortures began again with even more severity. Then I was obliged to confess my sabotage, for the brutes stuck needles in my arms. After that they left me alone until 10 August; then they had me called to the office and told me I was condemned to death. I was put on a train of deportees going to Brussels, from which I was freed on 3 September by Brussels patriots.”

“…women were subjected to the same treatment as men. To the physical pain, the sadism of the torturers added the moral anguish, especially mortifying for a woman or a young girl, of being stripped nude by her torturers. Pregnancy did not save them from lashes. When brutality brought about a miscarriage, they were left without any care, exposed to all the hazards and complications of these criminal abortions.’’

“…by four soldiers, each armed with a submachine gun, and two other Germans in civilian clothes holding revolvers. “Having looked into my handbag, they found three identification cards. Then they searched my room and discovered the pads and stamp of the Kommandantur and some German passes and employment cards which I had succeeded in stealing from them the day before ….
“Immediately, they placed handcuffs upon me and took me to be interrogated. When I gave no reply, they slapped me in the face with such force that I fell from my chair. Then they struck me with a rubber ring across the face. This interrogation began at 10 o’clock in the morning and ended at 11 o’clock that night. I must tell you that I had been pregnant for 3 months.”

I was easily able to distinguish the two, Senator; not only due to the vast difference in the techniques and methods mentioned, the amount of pain inflicted, or the purpose of the two. You see, Senator, I was able to tell the difference because the Nazi’s inflicted this torture on their own citizens. This was done to innocent civilians or dissenting politicians like yourself. They were arrested at home, on the street, at restaurants. Ours were taken prisoner on the battlefield. You do a disservice not only to our brave soldiers currently engaged in the act of keeping you safe, but you also do a more grevious disservice to the memory of those brave souls who resisted truly repressive regimes and dictators who used torture as a device of control.

Soviets
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago”

If the intellectuals in the plays of Chekhov who spent all their time guessing what would happen in twenty, thirty, or forty years had been told that in forty years interrogation by torture would be practiced in Russia; that prisoners would have their skulls squeezed within iron rings, that a human being would be lowered into an acid bath; that they would be trussed up naked to be bitten by ants and bedbugs; that a ramrod heated over a primus stove would be thrust up their anal canal (the “secret brand”); that a man’s genitals would be slowly crushed beneath the toe of a jackboot; and that, in the luckiest possible circumstances, prisoners would be tortured by being kept from sleeping for a week, by thirst, and by being beaten to a bloody pulp, not one of Chekhov’s plays would have gotten to its end because all the heroes would have gone off to insane asylums.

I have a hard time equating crushed skulls, acid baths, and seared anal cavities with lowered air conditioning. Perhaps Senator Durbin can explain in what universe “loud rap music” could be mistaken for or compared to “being beaten to a bloody pulp”. Don’t forget, I am not engaging in mere rhetoric here. Senator Durbin asserts that one could easily mistake written descriptions of torture in a gulag for the written description of interrogation at Guantanamo Bay. I wonder what Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn would say to that.

Cambodia
Quick history lesson. A years long civil war in Cambodia ended in 1975 with the victory of the Khmer Rouge led by Pol Pot. The Khmer Rouge cleared the cities, forcing city dwellers into forced labor as peasants in order to build the ideal communist society. Millions were put to death. One of the most feared prisons in Pol Pot’s Cambodia was S-21, also known as Tuol Sleng Prison. This was a former high school where nearly 20,000 people were tortured and executed. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge believed that children were “pure” and so used them to guard S-21, making them not just witnesses but accomplices to one of the most calculated atrocities of this century. Think about that.

Of the nearly 20,000 prisoners to enter S-21 only seven (or six, depending on the report) survived.

“When I first arrived in Tuol Sleng my wife and I were taken to a table and they asked us a few questions. Some guards stood behind us. Later they asked my wife [Neary] and I to put our hands behind our backs and we were handcuffed and blindfolded,” Bou Meng said.

“I thought it was a school. I thought I was in the wrong place. I had a bad taste in my mouth and my wife was crying,” he said

“She cried and told them she was an orphan. She pleaded with them but they didn’t listen.”
It was the last time he saw Neary and the start of two weeks of shackles and starvation-the time needed to break even the strongest prisoner’s will before interrogation, Bou Meng said.

After the torture began and lasted for seven days, Bou Meng was left with only a handful of teeth-the rest were smashed out-permanent hearing loss from blows to his head and scars on his back from bamboo truncheons that are still visible today.

“One interrogator asked when did I join the [US Central Intelligence Agency]. They kept forcing me to answer but I refused to answer,”

From “Less Than Human: Torture In Cambodia”

The interrogator told me to me confess, or else he’d hurt me. I didn’t have any answer. He tied the electric wire firmly around my handcuffs and connected the other end to my trousers with a safety pin. He sat down again.

“You’ve been reported to have been going around instigating people to oppose Angkar,” he said. “Who is your network?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brother,” I said. I didn’t know what they thought I had done. At the cooperative I never had time to go around and see my friends, not a single one. It must have been a pretext to kill me. The man holding the gun laid it on the table and walked towards me. He connected the wire to the electric power and connected the other end to my bottom of my shorts.

“Now do you remember? Who collaborated with you to betray Angkar?” he asked.

I couldn’t think of the words to answer them when he gave me an electric shock. My whole body went into a spasm and I passed out. When I came to I could hear a distant voice asking “How many people in your network? Who are you communicating with?”

“No…brothers,” I could only get those two words out before I fell unconscious again.

After confessions were drafted and redrafted to the satisfaction of their jailers, the prisoners were executed, often along with the families, usually by being clubbed to the back of the head with hoe or axe handles. On July 1, 1977, 114 women were executed, 90 of them listed on records as “wives” of prisoners. The next day, 31 sons and 43 daughters of prisoners were killed. On October 15 alone, a record 418 prisoners were executed.

The following torture techniques are documented in S-21 archives:
Beating: by hand, heavy stick, branches, bunches of electric wire
Burning with cigarette
Electric shock
Feeding “2 or 3 spoonfuls of shit”
Being jammed with a needle
Having fingernails pulled out
Shoving
Scratching
Suffocation with plastic bag
Made to drink urine
Forced feeding
Hanging upside down
Holding up arms for an entire day
Water torture: by immersion, or by drops on the forehead
Paying homage to the image(s) of dogs
Paying homage to walls, tables or chairs

Again, I fail to see how the US actions in Guantanamo Bay in interrogating prisoners of war could be compared with the barbarism visited on civilians by murderous, dictatorial regimes. So allow me to refute this assertion:

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

No, I most certainly would not, and neither would any other rational human being. It’s just you, Dick.

The apologists in the “mainline” denominations are living up to their legacies. Go coo with the other doves will ya?

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