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Senator Dick Durbin, who compared the treatment of terrorist detainees with the victims of the Nazis, Soviets and Khymer Rouge (who collectively killed more than 18,000,000 people, rejected charges that he insulted US forces.

Durbin said his comments had been misinterpreted as an attack on the U.S. military, adding he did not even know who was in charge of the particular interrogation cited in the FBI agent's account.

"Sadly, we have a situation here where some in the right-wing media say I've been insulting men and women in uniform," he said. "Nothing could be farther from the truth."

A Durbin spokesman said Wednesday that the senator did not plan to apologize for the comments.

The senator issued a statement saying it's the administration that should apologize "for abandoning the Geneva Conventions and authorizing torture techniques that put our troops at risk and make Americans less secure."

So, who did Senator Durbin think was in charge of Gitmo? Who did Durbin think was conducting the interrogation? Who did Durbin think apprehended the detainees? The administration? Or American military forces?

Durbin said that it was "no exaggeration" to suggest that the techniques cited by the FBI agent were not acceptable in a democracy.

"This is the kind of thing you expect from repressive regimes but not from the United States," he said. 'Repressive regimes' manage to stay in power because they use the military to do the repressing.

Pol Pot, Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin didn't wander around the countryside repressing their population. They used their military.

It is impossible to allege that US military forces conduct themselves in a manner reminiscent of the Nazis without insulting the military, not to mention putting US forces in even greater peril.

But Durbin probably really didn't intend to insult the military. Instead he used them like a club with which to take a swing at the Bush administration.

He just didn't care one way or another.

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