I figure someone must have conducted a poll somewhere that showed that if you whimper, blink your eyes real fast and swallow hard while you pretent to apologize 72% of the people will buy it!
You could be on to something. But it's really worse than that, as we know. It's the fact that words are allowed to mean nothing or something, this or that, just about anything. We're told that his remarks were "taken out of context," but no one's told us or bothered to explain exactly in what context they were originally uttered! The words were given a very precise context (our behavior in Iraq)and an analogy (Gulag, et al). There can be no question that he meant exactly what he said, and that he's sorry not for having said it but because it turned out to be politically inconvenient.
Where's DOD in this argument? Where are the cries from readers of the Constitution, from Senators, from Congressmen who realize that Durbin's fightin' words were TREASONOUS?