"I hope it's your family members that die"

Of all the wingnutty statements from Rep. Dana "you say Taliban, I say Paliban" Rohrabacher, this may be the wingnuttiest. What makes it worse is that he said it in the presence of Col. Ann Wright, who served this country for 45 years in the military and the diplomatic service, fighting for the very values on which Rohrabacher spits.

During a Congressional hearing this week with members of the European Parliament on the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby detainees are flown on CIA planes to secret prisons all over the world to be tortured either at Guantanamo or their countries of origin, Rohrabacher scoffed at all notions of eliminating this deeply troublesome program, which has harmed our stature with our allies and around the world and has debased our souls, and then busted out with this:

Rohrabacher railed against anyone who questioned the right of the Bush administration to do whatever it wanted, legal or illegal, to prevent terrorist acts and said that by not supporting the Bush policies was consigning their country to the terrorists. In particular he said that any Americans who questioned the extraordinary rendition were un-American [...]

Rohrabacher never once mentioned due process, the rule of law, right to a trial for anyone picked up in the extraordinary rendition program. Merely because persons were “rendered” and imprisoned by the US meant to Rohrbacker they were guilty.

Rohrabacher said if European countries did not cooperate with the United States and go along with whatever the Bush administration wanted, they were condemning their countrymen to death by not using extralegal methods to imprison terrorist suspects. When citizens attending the hearing, including members of Codepink Women for Peace and Veterans for Peace, heard Rohrabacher’s statement, they collectively groaned. Then, much to the shock and disbelief of everyone in the hearing room, Rorhbacker said to those who had expressed displeasure at his statements: "I hope it’s your family members that die when terrorists strike."

So a US Representative wished for death on his fellow Americans because they disagree with him that the best way to fight terror is to hook people's genitals up to electrodes so they can give us false information.

This is of course nothing new for Rohrabacher. During the election he told the father of an Iraq soldier that "you're the one calling your son a war criminal." (go about 5:15 into the clip)

But this is pretty low on the scale of human discourse. Hoping that your critics are killed by terrorists. And don't forget, after the fact he'd exploit those dead to justify permanent and endless war.