Thanks for pointing this out to me Tom. When I read it originally AND recently; I realize it is BARELY an admission of wrong doing. Like Lee recently "apologizing" (as if it makes all his other words disappear.)

It may help your admission that "it was a mistake to use specific interrogation methods like waterboarding", but you completely glossed over the standing on boxes with black hoods on their heads for hours at a time with electrodes attached to every orifice on their body, beatings including teeth knocked out, dog attacks, forced fornication and feces smearing at times ending up in death. No trials necessary. No apologies. Just like Rumsfeld and Rice.
Not even an admission of horror that the US WAS responsible for these reprehensible acts when the photos hit the internet years ago.

After your initial word "mistake", you go on to back pedal and make LESS of the whole issue:

>"it's easy to understand why the MISTAKE was made."

It's not TORTURE......it's as a MISTAKE!

>"I still oppose qualifying every form of interrogation or "discipline"....solitary confinement, restriction of privileges, leaving lights on all the time, as "torture."

You immediately here IGNORE THE FOREST and point out a few small trees.

>"a little humility here might be appropriate in relation to the purely partisan sniping on this issue."

Sorry Tom, TORTURE as I have described it above, and how the world saw it, is NOT partisan "sniping".

>"Much of the opposition I faced ....had less to do with the issue <of> the Bush Derangement <Syndrome>.

OK, blame US instead of your pathetic excuses.

>"There is no real evidence that the CIA under a Democratic administration would not have made similar decisions".

That's like saying that my mother "might have" made the same decisions.
"She made him pile on of top of other naked men with their asses hanging in the air and gleefully smeared them with their own feces while they shit themselves when being faced by hungry dogs".

And then you finished off your "admission" with this:
>"the smugness and moral righteousness that has characterized a lot of the argument could seriously be toned down a bit."

WHY? To excuse people like you, and the men in office that perpetrated these crimes against humanity and broke international laws in the face of the whole world?

YOU are an EXCUSER AND AN APPEASER. YOU Tom, this was no "admission."
It was a mulling over that "perhaps" waterboarding is an extreme form of torture.
Just chuck out all the rest, make excuses and blame others for their sniping or moral righteousness.
I can see WHY Art calls you on your BS.

End of story.