John Cole is one of the few right-wing pundits I read regularly. Sure, he's a conservative, but his positions are consistent and his military experiences give him a perspective sorely lacking on the right side of the blogosphere.
Today, Cole waded into RedState and -- on their own front page -- delivered a brilliant, articulate, dead-on smackdown of the hysterical Durbin-bashers.
Update [2005-6-20 23:8:57 by Buck Fush]: Trevino concurs.
Money excerpts:
Are Durbin's remarks really that offensive? Do you honestly hear descriptions like that and think to yourself- "Gee, American troops do that all the time."
Of course you don't, and I don't either. I think of some third world dictator, some tin-pot despot who brutalizes not only his enemy but his own people. Someone like, for example, Saddam Hussein. Or Pol Pot. And that was Durbin's point- not that we are Nazis, but that we are better than Nazis by an order of magnitude, and that such acts of abuse, while rare, are beneath us.
What should offend you is not what Durbin said, but the possibility that what Durbin said regarding the abuse may be accurate -even if it happened only once. And spare me the false bravado and the tough-guy attitudes about how this doesn't sound so tough, and they deserve what they get. I am all in favor of stern measures and tough interrogation practices, but there are lines that should not be crossed.
...
When Bush won the election in 2000, a popular refrain in the base was "Thank God the adults are in charge." Is it really asking too much that we behave like adults?
Read the whole thing -- it's one of the most intelligent things I've read from a conservative in a long, long time. The dam is breaking.
