Mike Tidmus has this fine ad up at his site to encourage the members of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders to join the College Republicans in General JC Christian’s crusade — Operation Yellow Elephant — to swell the depleted ranks of our military in Iraq.

Of course, I see no calls for enlistment at the major right-wing blogs. Powerline is now engaged in being mighty offended by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) making comments comparing the interrogation of detainees at Gitmo to the treatment of prisoners by the Soviet gulags, the Nazis, or Pol Pot.

Here’s what Durbin said:

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here — I almost hesitate to put them in the record, and yet they have to be added to this debate. Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report: 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.

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. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.

Now the righties are jumping on this as if Durbin said, “Guantánamo Bay is equal to 20 million Russians doing forced labor in the gulags or 6 million Jews dying in the Holocaust or millions being slaughtered in the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge. Then they’ll go off on the “our torture is luxury compared to their torture” tangent, like this one from Powerline:

Some 800 suspected terrorists have, so far, been incarcerated at Gitmo. All of them have had their cases reviewed by military commissions. About 235 have been released, 61 are today awaiting release or transfer, and about 520 remain, having been given all the due process to which they are entitled by U.S. and international law [Which is little to none.], including the Geneva Conventions. They are enemy combatants. [Which means they don’t get protection under the Geneva Conventions.] We are entitled to hold them until the war is over whether it’s tomorrow or in 2525. [Because the president said so.]

Are we torturing and starving these people? No. Chaining someone to a wall or a floor isn’t comfortable, but it isn’t torture [We prefer to call it “stress positions”.]. And it’s important to remember what is. Nearly two years ago, I spoke to three men who were held in a Saudi jail and given the full Lubyanka treatment. In a 2003 interview, James Lee, Peter Brandon, and Glenn Ballard each told me of how they were treated. What Brandon described to me was credible and consistent with what the other two said. [Say, don’t we routinely ship people off to places like Saudi Arabia and Syria for just that sort of treatment?]

Brandon told me he was “systematically beaten” and subjected to what he called the “rotisserie” treatment. “I was shackled at the feet, you see, and handcuffed,” Brandon told me. “And they sort of thread a broom handle through your arms and your legs. Then you’re hung upside down, and so you’ve got all the weight on the creases of your arms, so it’s very painful.” On the third day, they beat his bare feet with an ax handle so badly that his feet were bloody. He was screaming so much that they forced a gag down his throat, and for a moment stopped his breathing. After about five days of beatings and sleep deprivation, the Saudis threatened to arrest Brandon’s wife and toddler son. He broke down, and confessed to terrorist bombings he says he didn’t commit. [Are you saying that tortured suspects often say anything to make the torture stop, so the reliability of toruture-induced intelligence is really poor?] I believe Brandon and the others of the crimes they were convicted of because the Saudis released them instead of executing them or imprisoning them for life under what passes for law there. What went on in that Saudi jail was torture. What’s going on at Gitmo isn’t.

OK, I’ll throw out a bone here. We don’t have the market cornered on torture. And we’re just minor league when it comes to torture, unlike our allies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, and Uzbekistan (where they’re fond of boiling people alive.)

But Durbin’s point was a point of comparison. “If I read this to you… you would… believe this must have been done by… some mad regime… that had no concern for human beings.” Yes, of course the gulags, the concentration camps, and the killing fields were far far worse than Guantánamo — but that doesn’t mean that Guantánamo is something to be proud of. Or is our justification now, “hey, at least we don’t chop off people’s heads or boil them alive!”

Durbin’s point was that it would be hard to believe that America was doing these things to people, but it is happening. Giving the prisoners fancy meals and a Koran doesn’t make up for waterboarding, sexual humiliation, mock executions, beatings, stress positions, and other things our mad regime is doing with no concern for human beings.

Anyway, while the 101st Fighting Keyboarders argue about the relative offense of one senator’s comments, there still remains a major recruiting shortfall in the military. The war they so eagerly support needs more warm bodies — time to stop quibbling over the definition of “gulag” and sign up for Operation Iraqi Freedom! Sign up quick before all the poor brown people take all the good slots!