After reading a FBI agent’s description of Guantánamo Bay, Senator Rick Durbin (D-IL) said that if you didn’t know that was about an American prison camp, you’d assume it described a prison from a much more infamous regime. Here’s the description he read:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. ... On another occasion, the [air conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the fetal position on the tile floor.
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist called Durbin’s comments a “heinous slander against our country and the brave men and women risking their lives every day to defend it.” After several comments like Frist’s, Durbin was driven to apologize.

In other words, torture is now accepted national policy, and denouncing torture is regarded as treason.

Today White House political advisor Karl Rove gave Durbin a huge thank-you for his apology:

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."
And people wonder why I want to move out of this country.

Discuss.

edit: There's currently a movement to ask Republican senators to denounce Karl Rove's words. I strongly encourage people to participate.