Reason #38,926,738,821 Why The Democrats Are Spineless, Cowardly Losers

Under fire from Republicans and some fellow Democrats, Sen. Dick Durbin apologized Tuesday for comparing American interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Nazis and other historically infamous figures. "Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line," the Illinois Democrat said. "To them I extend my heartfelt apologies."

His voice quaking and tears welling in his eyes, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate also apologized to any soldiers who felt insulted by his remarks. ... "I made reference to Nazis, to Soviets, and other repressive regimes. Mr. President, I've come to understand that's a very poor choice of words."

And so here we have Reason #38,926,738,821 of why the Democrats are spineless, cowardly losers.

Durbin reads these horror stories from Cuba, Iraq and Afghanistan and somehow corrals enough guts to speak the truth, to say flatly and without qualification that the US's whole-hearted embrace of torture, rape and murder is no different from any other despotic regime, and when a few assholes get annoyed that the truth is being spoken, rather than standing up for his comments, and trotting out more pictures and more horror stories, Durbin suddenly acts like a cowed puppy, head down, tail between his legs, submitting to the dominance of the alpha male.

And all this unfolds as more photos and videos of US-sanctioned and US-approved torture are about to be released.

Mark Morford's latest column is depressing, yes, but also cathartic:

Why are major American media not swarming all over the Downing Street Memos thing? Why is the entire nation not just appalled and disgusted and aghast at finding seemingly irrefutable proofs about what we all already knew, which is that BushCo planned to invade Iraq long before 9/11 and needed to find a way to justify it?

And, we now know, he was even willing to go so far as to rig the intelligence and "fix the facts" and screw the U.S. economy and screw any sort of exit strategy and screw the potential for lost lives and let's just blindly stomp on in there and bomb the living crap outta Saddam despite the undeniable pre-Iraq evidence that Saddam had zero WMDs and that his nuclear program was "effectively frozen," and despite how BushCo and the CIA and FBI and DOD and the Clinton administration and your grandma all knew it? ...

Answer: Because it's not really news. Not anymore. ...

Here is the American cynic's view: It is almost too late to care about the lies. It is almost pointless to scream and rant and point fingers of blame. We all know who is to blame, and it ain't Saddam, and it ain't Osama, and it ain't "terror," and it ain't our "freedoms." Bush has driven us so deep into the Iraq hellhole it serves almost no purpose to whine about the obvious deceptions and blatant whorelike pre-9/11 machinations that got us here. ...

[But] shouldn't Bush be held accountable? Shouldn't he be made to answer for these lies, these obvious abuses of power?

Answer: You're goddamn right he should. He should also be strapped to an incredibly uncomfortable chair and made to look at the smoking bones of ten thousand dead Iraqi children. But that's just me. ...

BushCo survived the illegal sanctioning of inhumane torture. They survived a gay male prostitute acting as a journalist. They survived Enron and Diebold and the rigging of the first election and they will survive Downing Street simply because all the people who should be on the attack about these atrocities all work for the guys who committed them.