The Associated Press reports that Illinois' Defeatist Democratic Senator Durbin apologized for remarks last week suggesting the treatment of Guantanamo detainees is equivalent to atrocities committed by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and former Cambodian leader Pol Pot.
Durbin initially refused to apologize, but by last Friday, he was trying to clarify his comments, saying that he regretted misunderstandings they caused.
Durbin took a lot of heat from the right side of the blogosphere, including California Yankee.
Yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist demanded that Durbin make a "formal apology" on the floor of the Senate. Today, Chicago's Democratic Mayor Richard Daley joined the chorus criticizing Durbin: "I think it's a disgrace to say that any man or woman in the military would act like that."
Unfortunately, Durbin won't just say he's sorry. Instead, Durbin said, "I'm sorry if...":
"I am sorry if anything I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.
"I am also sorry if anything I said cast a negative light on our fine men and women in the military ... I never ever intended any disrespect for them. Some may believe that my remarks crossed the line to them I extend my heartfelt apology," Durbin said.
That's not a heartfelt apology worth the tears the Senator shed delivering it.
Dennis M. Becklin, Publisher of Oregon News Online, writes that Durbin's half-apologies for Nazi slurs are part and parcel of Democrat invective:
In fact, democrat US Senators have turned the United States Senate into a mean-spirited institution that is filled with vile acrimony. This is now an institution that provides juicy tidbit quotations for use by the enemies of our noble country and fills terrorist publications with vindication for their wanton murder of innocents and their brutal repression of everything associated with the very ideal of democracy.
[. . .]
Perhaps Durbin just got caught up in the tide of nastiness flowing from US Senate democrats. Perhaps it's not really his mistake...it's just a symptom of a greater illness... Maybe it's contagious to be around so many democrat Senate colleagues who are all talking the same kind of language about the US President, about Guantanamo "atrocities" and about the Iraq "quagmire".Perhaps it is contagious. Perhaps it is fatally contagious to the career of a US Senator who doesn't have sufficient control over his tongue or his brain to understand when he is slandering the entire US Military and the nation he was elected to serve.
The Democratic leadership has to learn that you can be perceived as tough and still be polite, or at least civil. Name calling is more an indication of immaturity than toughness.
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