"If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

Did an Air America radio commentator say that, using airtime bought by George Soros? Was it an al-Jazeera "journalist" railing against the Great Satan? A Democratic Underground poster, perhaps? Was it the laughable figure of a sign-waving war protester standing on a street corner somewhere? No... sad to say, that was a United States Senator comparing American soldiers to Hitler's Gestapo, Stalin's KGB, and Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge. That was Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin, assaulting the US military on behalf of the terrorists held at Gitmo, saying that our troops have no concern for human beings. Durbin may come from the Land of Lincoln, but he lives in the Land of Quisling.

Dick Durbin is the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, the Democratic Senate Whip, put in that position by his fellow Democratic leaders. Now when we say that Democrats are working to undermine America's military and are taking the enemy's side in the War on Terror, no one can say, "oh, that's just a few fringe wackos." No, that's the official leadership of the Democratic party attacking our troops and giving aid and comfort to the enemy in wartime! How many times will Durbin's words be replayed by our enemies to ramp up anti-American feelings, recruit more terrorists and give heart to those already fighting us? How must American troops feel, knowing that the Democrats consider them comparable to the worst examples of inhumanity and brutality to exist in the last hundred years? Is that how Democrats "support our troops?" What Durbin said was unconscionable, indefensible, and about as un-American and unpatriotic (yes, I will say it) as anything I've ever heard. Even an abject apology couldn't begin to repair the damage he has caused. And yet... not a single one of his fellow Democrats has repudiated his words.

So what unimaginable horrors had been visited on the poor, hapless prisoners to upset Dick Durbin so? Were they tortured to death, maimed, starved and broken? Were they slaughtered by the millions, as Durbin would apparently have us think? Well, the reality is "just as bad," I suppose. According to the email he received, which Durbin has not released to the public, some prisoners had their air conditioning turned up too high, and others had it turned too low. I wonder whether Nazi death camps even had air conditioning; I know they had heat, in the form of ovens. Some prisoners wore chains and were kept in uncomfortable positions. Imagine that. Some were scared by nearby dogs. Not eaten alive by dogs, mind you: scared. Some were made to stand for hours, had women invading their personal space, and had loud music blared in their ears. I've been to clubs like that. Oh, the inhumanity.

Some prisoners had to listen to rap music and Christina Aguilera songs. Alright, maybe that part could be classified as "brutality." However, these are the same prisoners who are given Qur'ans (by the US government; isn't that a violation of the "separation of Church and State?") and far better food than they've ever had, like honey-glazed chicken and lemon-baked fish. These are the same prisoners whose religious rights are so well respected that guards are not allowed to walk near their cells during prayer times, lest the squeak of their shoes disturb the prisoners while they're praying for our deaths.

Compare that to conditions in actual Nazi POW camps where Americans were held during WWII. In the camp known as Stalag IX, for instance: "Over 4,700 American POWs were far more than the camp could handle. The food was terrible and rationed in insufficient quantities. Many of the captives were too weak to greet their liberators. Many corpses remained exposed and unburied. For each 160-person barrack, [there was] only one cold water tap, and one hole in the ground for a toilet. The barracks were so overcrowded that the prisoners had to take turns sleeping, in bunks and on the floor in lice-infested straw." Sure, I can see where Durbin and the rest of the Liberal Democrats who've never been there could mistake that for Gitmo. Let's not even get into the millions who died of malnutrition, brutality and overwork in Soviet gulags. Let's not mention the millions who were brutally slaughtered by the Khmer Rouge in their takeover of Cambodia and deliberate regression of that country to the Stone Age. If Durbin and his ilk want to see a closer analogue to their killing fields and gulags, all they have to do is take a peek over Gitmo's wall into Castro's Cuba.

Liberals complain that we haven't proven the Gitmo detainees are terrorists, so we should let them go free. Some Liberals even believe the detainees have rights under the Constitution to be given lawyers and a speedy trial in a US court of law. The fact is that the US Constitution does not apply to foreigners, especially enemies, just as the Geneva Conventions do not apply to terrorists. This is a war, not an episode of Scooby Doo. At no point will Osama bin Laden say, "I would have won, if it wasn't for those pesky Bush and Cheney kids" before being marched off to jail. We don't have to give the enemy a speedy trial if that would conflict with national security. Anyone who lifts a hand against an American soldier is the enemy by his own choice. I know that's a hard concept for Liberals to understand, but it's a hard world, and a hard war. One that we could easily lose, if we allow Liberals to dictate our conduct.

In order to claim protection under the Geneva Conventions, participants must fight wearing a recognisable uniform or badge, fight under officers who can be held responsible for them, carry their weapons openly, and -- perhaps most important -- fight according to the rules of war laid out in the Geneva Conventions themselves. The Geneva Conventions are not meant to be a handicap to decent people -- they're meant to be a deterrent to keep rogue nations from breaking those rules. If one side of a conflict decides not to fight according to Geneva Conventions, then they forfeit their protection as well. The two are locked together -- that's the rules. Yet Liberals continue to claim that we -- not the terrorists who deliberately murder innocents -- are uninterested in laws and human rights.

We're all for human rights, more than any other country has ever been in the entire history of mankind. But we're fighting an enemy who isn't. We're fighting an enemy that has gladly used their own children as suicide bombers, and deliberately targets children. We're fighting an enemy that will settle for nothing less than total global domination by their twisted version of Islam. We're fighting an enemy that cannot be bought off or reasoned with. Note to Liberals: if you want to play patty-cake with those inhuman barbaric bastards, gamble with your own life. Don't do it with mine, or those of my friends and family.

Every weakness we show is one that will be ruthlessly exploited to destroy us. Every consideration we show the enemy is one that will be turned against us and used to murder more innocent Americans. Osama bin Laden admitted that his plan to destroy the US really began when he saw us run away after a mere 18 casualties at Mogadishu, Somalia in 1993. "Our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger," he said in a 1998 ABC interview. "After a few blows, [America]... rushed out of Somalia in shame and disgrace, dragging the bodies of its soldiers."

Liberals are against keeping probable enemies locked up "indefinitely" without a trial. The most humane and safe thing we can do to anyone who is a likely enemy is to lock him up, and sort them all out after we have utterly broken the back of al-Qaeda and the other international terror groups. We cannot try them now, because every piece of information that gets out -- and believe me, it WILL get out -- is like a gun aimed at an American's head. If you're a Liberal, maybe that doesn't bother you as much as the thought that the UN -- mostly comprised of dictators itself -- might disapprove. Maybe you can make a moral equivalence between keeping probable terrorists locked up and endangering innocent lives. Maybe you're all nuanced and multicultural and morally self-righteous and so on. But I'm not. If there's even a chance of an innocent American being put in harm's way by granting these people any sort of legal rights, then forget it. I'm against it. Keep them locked up, out of harm's way.

Some people claim that the detainees at Gitmo should be set free because, after several years, they can't give up any more useful intelligence. Those people forget that al-Qaeda's "trademark" is planning operations up to six years in advance. If we let them out, or give any hint of what they've talked about, or even discuss who they are, all the future plans they have given up to us could be rendered useless. Liberals don't seem to understand the cell organisation of groups like al-Qaeda. Since there is little contact between cells, others might not know that a cell's been disrupted and its members arrested... until they do make contact, and give themselves away. Slowly but surely, by keeping those who have been arrested incommunicado, al-Qaeda is being taken apart.

People like Dick Durbin and NY Congressman Charlie Rangel, who said of the Iraq war, "This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," only advance the cause of our enemies. They don't do America any good, and they don't do America any justice. They trivialise the true horrors that Americans have paid in blood to face and defeat in the past; they slap every member of the US military, past and present, in the face with such comparisons. They hand the enemy propaganda material in a vain attempt to repeat the public relations victory Liberals enjoyed over America in the Vietnam War.