Right Wing Nut House

The joint US-Iraqi Operation “Spear” is rolling and taking a toll on terrorists in Karabila, a town near the Syrian border:

The heaviest fighting was in Karabilah, a desert outpost of low-slung buildings where Marines said insurgents had taken refuge after a U.S.-led assault in early May.

Marines have launched four offensives since early May in restive Anbar province, which military officials have described as a haven for foreign fighters entering Iraq from Syria. Most of the region’s residents are Sunni Muslim Arabs, who are believed to make up the bulk of Iraq’s insurgency.

Marine aircraft bombarded Karabilah on June 11 and returned to the town when intelligence showed a strong insurgent presence, said Col. Bob Chase, operations chief for the 2nd Marine Division. The current offensive, dubbed Operation Spear, began with airstrikes and light ground clashes Friday.

In additon to these successful combat operations, the Marines rescued four Iraqi hostages who, unlike the terrorists being detained at Gitmo, were not being “tortured” by turning off the air conditioning or playing rap music. They were instead, being tortured , like ya know, for real:

But inside this complex, they found something even more sinister — four Iraqis who were handcuffed, their hands and feet bound with steel cuffs. They’re now being taken away for medical treatment, one being borne away on a stretcher.

The man in intense pain that they’re trying to get into a vehicle, has been tortured, he says, and has all the marks of being tortured with electricity. His back is crisscrossed with welts. The other man is even … in worse shape. Their crime was to be part of the border police.

One of the other men, the other border police, was too weak, really, to tell us what had happened. But he obviously was in very, very bad shape.

They were rescued this morning as Marines and Iraqi forces came into this complex, which included an underground bunker, weapons stockpiles and other things, and found them here. Their captors have fled.

Are these the same Marines that Dick “The Prick” Durbin is saying routinely abuse prisoners at Gitmo in the manner reminiscent of Nazi thugs and Pol Pot’s Cambodian Genocide and Happy Bottom Riding Club?

You betchya! And, of course, Marines are much more familiar with killing the torturers than they are with doling out torture.

That said, our guys have evidently killed about 50 terrorists and rounded up about 100 others. And I sure hope Baby Assad in Syria can hear the bombs dropping in Damascus. Unless he gets serious about closing the border to these fanatical foreign fighters who are pouring across to help Zarqawi and his al Qaeda fanatics kill Iraqis and Americans, he may get an up close and personal look at the way the Marines perform in combat.

UPDATE

The Captain makes a similar comparison with Durbin’s myopia regarding real torture:

If Senator Durbin wants to get up on the Senate floor and rail against torture, perhaps he could start with these torture houses, where real cruelty took place, not the humiliation tactics at Gitmo that tried to save American lives. What Fathil experienced was the same torture as that given out by Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athists during his decades-long reign, only Fathil had the good fortune to survive his encounter with the Islamofascists outside of Gitmo. Others, as the Times notes, did not fare so well.