I just realized, check out how the Trib described what Senator Durbin supposedly said yesterday:
Enter Durbin, second-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate. In a Senate speech Tuesday, Durbin raked Bush administration officials over the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. He read an account by an unnamed FBI agent of the alleged treatment of a prisoner who was "chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water." The prisoner, the agent said, had been subject to extremely hot and cold temperatures, and loud rap music.Their intent? To make it sound like Durbin is an idiot, talking about how loud rap music is akin to Nazi treatment of prisoners.
Of course, let's look at what the Trib intentionally - or negligently - left out of Durbin's description.
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.Gee, Durbin talked about a lot more than just rap music. In fact, that was the most shocking paragraph of his entire speech. Everyone saw it. It was the thing that popped out at you. It was horrifying. And it was the one thing that the Chicago Trib left out of their editorial (and interestingly, it's the same paragraph the Washington Times left out of THEIR editorial, hmmm.)
We would never want to presume that the Chicago Trib would be intentionally trying to mislead millions of Chicagoans by, in essence, lying to them about what Senator Durbin ACTUALLY said. So we'll just assume they're simply incompetent journalists.
