Gitmo Archipelago

So, 'member that one time when Senator Dick Durbin analogized our treatment of prisoners to the actions of despotic regimes and all hell broke loose? Yeah ... that was crazy. And then 'member how he got shamed into apologizing for things he hadn't even said? Yeah ... that sucked. In fact, it sucked a lot. Because, as many other righteous (that's righteous, not right-wing!) bloggers have pointed out, what Durbin said was so far from out of line as to be ... completely correct. How correct was Durbin, you ask? Well, here's a little exercise. Read through the two statements below, and see if you can tell which one is describing American actions, and which one is describing the actions of a recognized brutal dictatorship. No cheating!!

1) [The detainee was] 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.

2) Depending on local conditions, a divisional pit can be substituted for the box. ...The prisoner was pushed into such a pit, ten feet in depth, six and a half feet in diameter; and beneath the open sky, rain or shine, this pit was for several days both his cell and his latrine. And ten and a half ounces of bread, and water, were lowered to him on a cord. ... The accused could be compelled to stand on his knees-not in some figurative sense, but literally: on his knees, without sitting back on his heels, and with his back upright. People could be compelled to kneel in the interrogator's office or the corridor for twelve, or even twenty-four or forty-eight hours. ... What kind of prisoner was most vulnerable to such treatment? One already broken, already inclined to surrender. It was also a good method to use with women.

OK, I admit ... that was a pretty easy one. But how about these:

3) ... such abuses included strangulations, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into detainees ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations.

4) A cigarette is put out on the accused's skin. ...a blow of the fist in the solar plexus, catching the victim in the middle of a breath, leaves no mark whatever. [One Colonel] used to take a "penalty kick" with his overshoes at the dangling genitals of male prisoners.

Got it? No? OK: items 1) and 3) are from the FBI records that Senator Durbin was quoting from. Items 2) and 4) are from the Gulag Archipelago, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's exhaustive account of life in a Soviet prison camp.

Pretty much tells you all you need to know, doesn't it? (hat-tip to This Modern World for the GA link.)