THE BURNED OVER DISTRICT

If your favorite drink is Kool-Aid. The Tower of Rumsfeld, formerly known as the Pentagon, has released another report on prisoner abuse in Iraq. The details would bring a smile to Stalin himself.

United States Special Operations troops employed a set of harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq during a four-month period in early 2004, long after approval for their use was rescinded, according to a Pentagon inquiry released Friday.

The investigation is the last of 12 major inquiries to be made public that focus on allegations of detainee abuse by American personnel in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq, and the first to focus on Special Operations troops, who operate with more latitude than other military units. It detailed harsh treatment that continued at isolated bases even after the abuses first surfaced at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Special Operations interrogators gave some detainees only bread or crackers and water if they did not cooperate, according to the investigation, by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica of the Army. One prisoner was fed only bread and water for 17 days. Other detainees were locked for as many as seven days in cells so small that they could neither stand nor lie down, while interrogators played loud music that disrupted their sleep.

The inquiry also determined that some detainees were stripped naked, drenched with water and then interrogated in air-conditioned rooms or in cold weather. General Formica said it appeared that Navy Seals had used that technique in the case of one detainee who later died during questioning in Mosul in 2004, but he reported that he had no specific allegations that the use of the technique was related to that death.

He also suggested that the moon's green cheese might be of military value.