Senator Durbin crosses the line...and an apology is in order.

Senator Bill Frist
06/20/2005

As I'm sure you've heard ...

Last Tuesday, a Senate colleague -- Richard Durbin of Illinois -- compared our soldiers' handling of detainees at the naval detention center at Guantanamo to the heinous actions taken years ago by "Nazis, Soviets in their Gulags or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

That's what the second highest ranking Democratic senator had to say about our soldiers ... U.S. soldiers.

An estimated 12 million died as slave laborers, in the death camps, or in field executions at the hands of the Nazis. Twenty million or more perished in Soviet gulags or at the hands of Stalin, and over 1.5 million people were murdered in Cambodia's killing fields from 1975 to 1979.

How many people have been killed at Guantanamo Bay?

Zero.

That's right ... zero.

And yet ... how many lives have been saved by the men and women of our military at Guantanamo?

How many terrorist attacks have been prevented or deterred by the information gleaned there?

Make no mistake ...

In captivity at Guantanamo are enemy combatants. They are in jail cells -- where they belong ... and NOT on the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan ... or on the streets of Nashville or Boston or Miami or New York.

Shameful does not begin to describe this heinous slander against our country and the brave men and women risking their lives every day to defend it.

At best, this was a grievous misstatement. At worst, a damaging display of demagoguery.

Senator Durbin has had ample opportunity to apologize without qualification, but has refused.

A full and official apology is in order, as well as a full and official retraction of his comments from the Congressional Record.


Bill Frist

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