Durbin is the Democratic Whip in the US Senate. In June 2005, he said "This is the type of thing you would expect from a repressive regime. This is not the type of thing you would expect from the United States. 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." He later apologized, but was criticized for insulting US military personnel and victims of genocide.
