James Joyner tries to save analogy by telling people to be more proportional in its use

Emil Janning: "I want to hear from a man like you. A man who has heard what happened. I want to hear--not that he forgives--but that he understands. . . . I did not know it would come to that. You must believe it. You must believe it."

Dan Haywood: "Herr Janning. It came to that the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."

--Abby Mann, Judgment at Nuremburg, 1961

For the context, see this post.

Yes it is playing sematics. Because the number for Bush is NOT Zero. We know of 26 individuals who have died while in custody. At least 5 of those are known to have been tortured to death and many more are suspected to have been. At least one is known to have been innocent. There are undoubtedly many more deaths that we havn't heard of.
Furthermore, we know that the policy of torture comes directly from Bush. He instructed his Attorney General to find a way to shield torturers from legal liability.

Which makes Bush a bit of a baby in the evil department. Especially when you measure using only the death-by-turture metric. Even so, it is clear that Bush has voluntarily joined the company of evil men who order others to torture and kill even when it isn't necessary for their survival. The difference at this point is no longer one of kind, it is merely one of scale.

And defending the scale of this evil is not something that honorable men do. Honorable men are like Durbin: The say clearly and in public - We should not be doing this.

They'd come up with crafty rationalizations, I'm sure. Such as "The Nazis were MUCH worse. They were never attacked by the Jews, Roma, gays, and others. But we were attacked by the islamofascists! This is self-defense! It's wrong to compare our gas chambers with their gas chambers, and it's wrong to equate our death-camp guards with their death-camp guards".

In fact, I believe the US is direcly following the Israeli model for fighting islamic terrorists here across the board.

The problem with the Israeli model is that, at best, it just creates a stalemate. It doesn't SOLVE the underlying problem.

But at lest in Israel's case, their very existence is plausibly at stake.

What the hell is our excuse?

There may be a reluctance on the part of some to make those particular analogies, because the U.S. government supported those governments. In the case of El Salvador, we trained, supplied, and accompanied the torturers, and worked hard to shield the torturers from accountability. In the case of Argentina, we trained and supplied.

The point of bringing up evil regimes is not to say that the US is one, but exactly the opposite. To say that X is the sort of thing that evil regimes do is to argue that we (the US) shouldn't be doing it. We are better than the bad guys, and we should hold ourselves to higher standards.

I love how you wackos are pretending that "loud music" and "turning up the AC" are the ONLY things these prisoners are subjected to at Gitmo and elswehere.

Some of the things WE have done to detainees include waterboarding, savage beatings, hanging people up by their wrists with handcuffs, USING ELECTRICAL SHOCKS, sexual assault, and the aformentioned forcing people to wallow in their own crap and piss for days at a time.

Not all of these things were done at Gitmo, so far as we know. But all of these things have been VERIFIED by US investigators.

In fact, there are around 2 dozen HOMICIDES being investigated.

It's obvious that the torture apologists have their heads up their asses.

I think a simple rule of thumb on interrigations should be to follow the Golden Rule. "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

If the technique you are about to employ is something YOU wouldn't approve of if it were done to you or a citizen of this country, then don't do it. Period.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the vast majority of those who employ such techniques would crack like a fat plumbers ass the minute they were subjected to such techniques. So they overcompensate for their own lack of intestinal fortitude by taking it out on the "hajis."

I actually was in a fraternity. And went through the pledge period. And, I can tell you that what happens at Gitmo is NOTHING LIKE fraternity hazing. And even if it were, the fraternity hazing is VOLUNTARY. Nobody is chained up in a basement and forced to live in their crap and piss for days at a time against their will.

That you would make this kind of argument, even as a joke, speaks volumes about how sick you people are.

Excuse me if I disagree. I happen to think that kind of treatment does NOT sound like America. In fact, it's downright UN-American in my book. America just does not do that. I happen to believe that America stands for human rights, freedom, the rule of law and justice.

But, apparently, I am completely wrong about that. I guess that makes me a traitor or something.

Dick Durbin discovers that some other people, besides our Nazi, Pol Pot-tish gulag managers at Gitmo, torture people, too. Durbin probably will ask for a report on the number of cells at Gitmo which are equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuff...