The Washington Monthly

June 18, 2005

GITMO TALK....I'm curious about something. First, read this FBI description of conditions found at Guantanamo, as quoted on the Senate floor by Dick Durbin:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee 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.

....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 __________.

Conservative apologists clearly believe it's out of bounds to fill in this blank with Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, or Pol Pot. Fine. I'm not really as offended by Nazi comparisons as some people are, but OK. No Nazis.

So my question is this: what is the right historical analogy? There are lots of evil regimes past and present to choose from, but I'm not sure which ones are acceptable references when describing the use of torture at Guantanamo. Can I get some conservative feedback on this?

UPDATE: I see that Brad Plumer is on sort of a similar wavelength.

—Kevin Drum 4:55 PM Permalink | Trackbacks

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