QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Jun 21, 2005 -> 04:46 PM)
Personally, I think he's right to apologize for using the Nazis as a reference.
The fact is that anyone who brings up the Nazis is doing so not because of that particular part of the Nazi behavior, but because of the war and the Holocaust. That is the only reason to bring up the Nazis in any political discussion today; to try to link the behavior of your opponent to the Holocaust because you believe that the Holocaust is so evil, any remote connection to it will immediately discredit your opponent.
It's simply wrong, and it does in fact trivialize the Holocaust. If our President erects gas chambers at Gitmo and starts killing people without due process, then I'll start making that comparison myself. But otherwise, it's just not a good method of arguing.
Personally, if I were to use a metaphor like Durbin, my choice would have been the Hanoi Hilton from the Vietnam conflict. In that mess, our soldiers were tortured without any due process or any protections from Geneva, exactly as we've done at Gitmo. I think that reference is a lot closer than the Nazi one anyway.
I don't know anything about Durbin but those comments to me aren't insulting and I think he got pressured into a weak apology.