[Stonecutter]

This from Crain's Chicago Business

By Greg Hinz
June 17, 2005
So, the Rush Limbaughs of the world have decided that it's time to
submit Dick Durbin to their version of shock and awe. They say he
ought to back off, apologize, even resign for criticizing the way in
which America treats foreign detainees at a camp at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba.

Give me a break. There is something worth protesting here. But it's
not Mr. Durbin, who is guilty, at most, of hyperbole. Rather it's a
conservative political establishment that just won't recognize that
George W. Bush sold America a bill of goods in Iraq. They're just
trying to change the subject from that ugly truth.

Let me concede up front that Mr. Durbin, the senior senator from
Illinois and the number-two Democrat in the Senate, notched up the
rhetoric in likening what's happening at Guantanamo to Adolph Hitler's
Nazis and Soviet Gulags. But name me a politician anywhere in
Washington these days who doesn't use strong words.

The real question is whether the senator was justified in making a
target of what Mr. Bush is doing in Cuba. And on that, he's absolutely
right.

To refresh the conservatives' minds, Mr. Bush asserts that America has
the legal right to snatch anyone from any place in the world and lock
them up for as long as he wants, without review from American courts,
international groups or anyone else. (Fortunately, American courts
have partially dissented).

The Bush Administration has asserted that none of those folks have to
be prosecuted. They've balked at releasing citizens of Australia and
other American allies, even when their governments have so requested.
They've held children. It is quite possible they're holding some
totally innocent people.

Now, war is not pretty. Some of the above may be defensible. But it is
debatable. Mistreating people, some possibly innocent, in a harsh
prison forever is not an Illinois value.

Nor is it an Illinois value to take a person who might possess some
intelligence of possible value, stake them out naked on the ground,
turn up an air-conditioner until they're shaking with cold, play
ear-splitting music, and watch them defecate and urinate on
themselves. That, in fact, was the conduct Mr. Durbin was protesting.

Andy McKenna, the chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, released
a statement calling Mr. Durbin "mean-spirited" and demanding that he
"defend those Illinoisans who are, or have, sacrificed in the nation's
service."

He did, Andy. He did by arguing that America doesn't torture people,
whatever some leaders may want. And besides, with former Gov. George
Ryan's trial coming up, don't you have better things to do than
issuing misleading statements to please the White House?

The fact is, conservatives pounce with all four feet every time Mr.
Durbin or anyone else says much anything else on what Mr. Bush calls
the war on terror because they can't defend what's really happened.

America got hood-winked into Iraq. There were no weapons of mass
destruction, any more than there are enough troops there now or any
real hope of getting them home anytime soon.

So far, it's cost us 1,700-plus American lives, and more than $300
billion. If I were a conservative commentator, I'd rather talk about
Mr. Durbin's hyperbole, too.