Not this old line again:

"The Department of Defense policy is clear -- we treat detainees humanely," (Lt. Cmdr. Joe) Carpenter said. "The United States operates safe, humane and professional detention operations for enemy combatants who are providing valuable information in the war on terror."

In the three years or so I've covered the Pentagon, and the two years I've covered detainee abuse, I've noticed a pattern that Lieutenant Commander Carpenter's line fits into. Information about torture is difficult to acquire: the DOD inquiries were often whitewashes, the GOP Congress was less than enthusiastic about investigating it, the whistleblowers quickly had their names dragged through the mud. (You should have seen Jeff Sessions in 2005 calling Lieutenant Commander Charlie Swift a liar.)

As a result, news articles about torture get published infrequently. And, whether intentionally or not, the Pentagon takes the opportunity to reset the scoreboard. That is, to put out old lines that have been obviated by stories published months or years before and hope that the lag between torture-news cycles makes everyone forgetful. Here, for instance, Carpenter is implying that Guantanamo Bay detainees continue to provide valuable intelligence. That hasn't been true for some time. In mid-2005,only about a quarter of Guantanamo detainees were still interrogated; and most detainees -- who, remember, are low-level Qaeda affiliates at worst (that is, before the Black Site 14 were transferred to GTMO late last year) -- have been there too long to provide useful intelligence. But good of the Pentagon to hope no one is noticing yet another lie.