Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin -- in an outrageous display of historical ignorance, hyperbole and idiocy [link PDF document] -- compared U.S. servicemen and women to Nazis.

When you read some of the graphic descriptions of what has occurred here [at Guantanamo Bay]--I almost hesitate to put them in the [Congressional] 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.

Remember, that this is not a foreign soldier we're talking about here -- someone who wore a uniform, carried arms openly and followed the laws of war -- but a terrorist who targeted civilians. These are people who, if they got their hands on a nuclear weapon, they would use it to kill as many innocent civilians as possible -- and count it a joy. These are people who raped, beat and stoned women. People who forbade girls from going to school. People who beat men for not having sufficient facial hair.

These are people who would love to kill every single American man, woman and child.

And our soldiers are the Nazis?

At this point, Sen. Durbin, an apology is warranted -- along with a heaping portion of groveling.

*UPDATE* No apology will apparently be forthcoming.

Durbin says the Bush administration should apologize for abandoning the Geneva Conventions.

Sen. Durbin should consider reading the Geneva Conventions, then he might discover that it doesn't apply to stateless terrorists who wear no identifiable uniform or insignia and target civilians.

Disgusting.