Temporary Remission of the Old Grey Lady's Dementia

In a rare moment of lucidity, the NY Times reports what most of us already knew.

A high-level military investigation into complaints by F.B.I. agents about the abuse of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, concluded in a report released Wednesday that their treatment was sometimes degrading but did not qualify as inhumane or as torture.

The report was presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt of the Air Force, who conducted the investigation after e-mail messages between Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at Guantánamo and their superiors in Washington were disclosed in a lawsuit.

In addition, one of the high-value detainees, Mohamed al-Kahtani, whom the military has said confessed that he was meant to be the 20th hijacker in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, was led around on a leash and forced "to perform a series of dog tricks." The leashing of a detainee to humiliate him was another practice that became notorious after it was recorded in a photograph of abuses at Abu Ghraib.

The report said those techniques and others were part of authorized approaches called "ego down" or "futility," which are used to make the interrogation subject question his sense of personal worth or the value of resisting.

"It's hard to see why we're so wrapped up in this investigation," Mr. Inhofe said. "We have nothing to be ashamed of."

Several Democrats saw it differently. They said the report demonstrated that the handful of abuses highlighted therein showed that the military was committed to absolving any high-level person of responsibility.

Untrue....the Dems see it the same as everyone except they choose to spin in in a fashion that causes the greatest disrepute on the military. This disingenuous breast beating by the left is political expediency personified and unfortunately they rarely pay a price for it.