We, the undersigned, wish to express our displeasure with the statements made by Senator Richard Durbin on the Senate Floor on June 14, 2005. As quoted from the Congressional Record, page S6594 these remarks are:

The administration also established a new interrogation policy that allows cruel and inhuman interrogation techniques.

Secretary Rumsfeld approved numerous abusive interrogation tactics against prisoners in Guantánimo. The Red Cross concluded that the use of those methods was ``a form of torture.''

Numerous FBI agents who observed interrogations at Guantánimo Bay complained to their supervisors. In one e-mail that has been made public, an FBI agent complained that interrogators were using ``torture techniques.''

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.

Specifically, we take offense at the comparison of the treatment of detainees at Guantánimo Bay, Cuba with the treatment of prisoners at the hands of Nazis in World War II, Soviet prisoners in the Gulags, and the murders committed by Pol Pot. We note that criticism of the American military and the entire military chain of command has become rampant, excessive, and reckless. Except for the incidents perpetrated by the few at Abu Ghraib, evidence to substantiate this reckless and excessive criticism of the military's conduct is uncorroborated, questionable, or nonexistent. We feel this is the case with Senator Durbin's remarks on the Senate Floor. We metaphorically compare Senator Durbin's remarks to the slap in the face General Patton gave to a private in Italy. We therefore demand that Senator Durbin produce the evidence in it's complete and unaltered form that caused him to make the aforementioned remarks. We demand Senator make this evidence public to all who wish to see it by publishing it to the Internet and all original material available for review in his office. Lacking such public disclosure of the requested evidence, we demand that Senator Durbin apologize in person and in writing to the men and women serving at Guantánimo Bay, Cuba just as General Patton had to in his atonement for that slapping incident.