Posted on 06/22/2005 9:20:44 PM PDT by CHARLITE
In what is deliciously being termed "Durbin Warfare," another messy debacle played out last week on the floor of the world’s greatest deliberative body when a leading Democrat was caught with his left-wing slip showing.
Illinois Senator Richard Durbin, Minority Whip, likened our treatment of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay to the killing machines of the Nazis, the Soviet Gulag, Pol Pot, or “some mad regime…that had no concern for human beings.”
His outlandish remarks were, of course, broadcast to the world by Al Jazeera, in order to further inflame the few blocks of the Arab Street where such trash is used as kindling. Durbin’s words did indeed give aid and comfort to our enemy who has claimed since day one that the murders of 9/11 were the result of Muslim mistreatment by the United States.
Inasmuch as this kind of rhetoric borders on the treasonous, some Republicans fired back the next day. On the Senate floor, Durbin was taken to the woodshed by John Warner, John Kyl, Mitch McConnell, and the irrepressible Jeff Sessions.
Warner was especially effective, reminding Durbin that unlike detainees interrogated at Camp Gitmo, the examples he cited were death camps where it is doubtful the victims were even asked their names before execution.
To the surprise of no one, Harry Reid then rose and predictably blamed President Bush: “The noise machine of the far right never stops and it’s gotten so much more in operation in the last few weeks,” he said. “This is all a distraction by the White House.”
Though Durbin subsequently tried to claim he does not know if the abuse was done by U.S. soldiers and meant no insult to them, his friends at Al Jazeera got the message:
“A U.S. senator has refused to apologise for comparing the actions of U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to those of Nazis, while others have decried or defended the mandate and method used to hold prisoners there.”
Not one Democrat spoke for the record to denounce Durbin’s anti-U.S. military statements. Unlike the GOP, it seems there are no "mavericks" in the Democratic Party willing to take on the leadership, even to defend the reputation of our troops during wartime. So jealous are they of the party's ever-shrinking political power, that the Dems will stop at nothing to embarrass our war effort and its leadership.
While our military was being trashed on the Senate floor, on the other side of the Capitol building, even more bizarre goings on were afoot. The increasingly delusional House Democrats were conducting below-ground sessions in which they essentially were pretending they ran things on Capitol Hill.
They were holding a mock impeachment inquiry based on the innocuous Downing Street Memo, the left’s Iraq War smoking-gun du jour. There, in a small, crowded conference room begged from the majority leadership, ranking House Judiciary Committee member John Conyers and friends tried to avenge their 1998 defeat when they tried to defend perjury by a sitting U.S. president in a civil rights lawsuit.
They’ve been holding these "hearings" on their own because Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner has been loath to commit valuable time to the rantings of Conyers and fellow Clinton defenders Maxine Waters, Marty Meehan, and Barney Frank. In reality, the gathering was little more than a dreary protest against the Iraq War and President Bush.
Nevertheless, C-SPAN carried an hour of the meeting where the tiny room was clogged with anti-war Democrats ringed by posed American flags in another reiteration of the left’s favorite message to our troops: Of course, we support you, it’s your phony, botched, illegal mission and your commander in chief that we hate and we’ll stop at nothing--not even propaganda that puts you at risk--to make sure they don’t succeed.
But it looks like they will have to find another venue to stab the American military in the back. According to The Hill, a Sensenbrenner staffer recently wrote to his minority counterpart, “I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN. Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”
In the House, the majority party can extend or deny such privileges to the minority should it choose. But unlike senators who can obstruct the proceedings via filibusters, Democrats in the lower chamber can do little but hold phony underground photo-ops.
And should the minority party continue to leave its left wing exposed and flapping loudly, it will stay that way for a long, long time.
About the Writer: Lisa Fabrizio is a freelance writer from Stamford, Connecticut. Lisa receives e-mail at mailbox@lisafab.com.
Can you imagine LBJ being the minority leader of this crew?
No mavericks among the Democrats? Interesting. I'd say they're all mavericks, except that would be an insult to mavericks everywhere.
I'm realy tired of "maverick". Can't we simply use "crackpot" again.
“I’m sitting here watching your ‘forum’ on C-SPAN. Just to let you know, it was your last. Don’t bother asking [for a room] again.”
I'd say.
They are just a hair away from yelling "baby-killer."
The word "loathsome" comes to mind, although, it is not quite condemning enough.
Talk about a freak show!
The party of but. Or is that butt?
Speaking of "freaks", has anybody ever seen Dick Durbin and Dennis Kucinich in the same room at the same time.
This is so pathetic. Self-important fools in a desperate attempt to make themselves seem relevant. I'm seeing more and more similarities between the Dems and the French. They have absolutely NO positive message.
If you don't read any of that, be SURE to read this: Conyers' whining, bitching letter to Dana Millbank who wrote the original article. This is a real scream!
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