OUTRAGE FATIGUE.

OUTRAGE FATIGUE. I must confess at being a bit surprised by today's New York Times piece by Mark Mazetti, which challenges the veracity of several claims made two days ago by President George W. Bush regarding the efficacy of what the president called an "alternative set of procedures" for intimida-- er, interrogation of terrorism suspects by the CIA in its secret prisons.It's not the general quality of Mr. Mazetti's reporting that causes my reaction; he has done some stellar work on the national security front. Nor is it the notion that our president would lie to us, especially about the nature of the so-called "war on terror." My non-plussed response, rather, stems from the idea that anyone considers such prevarication news enough to investigate it anymore. (Kudos to Mazetti.)Indeed, I find myself quite often falling victim to the condition of outrage fatigue, whereby I perceive an obvious lie, or something that doesn't pass the smell test, coming out of the mouths of the president or his henchmen, and simply let the thing go by. "Well, that's just what they do," I think. "So many lies, so little time."From Mazetti in today's Times, writing on Bush's assertion of the CIA's success in gleaning good information from the men interrogated in its secret prisons:

One of the men, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, is believed to have given false information about links between Iraq and Al Qaeda after C.I.A. officials transferred him to Egyptian custody in 2002. Mr. al-Libi�s statements were used by the Bush administration as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons.It emerged later that Mr. al-Libi had fabricated these stories while in captivity to avoid harsh treatment by his Egyptian captors.

Okay. Maybe I can summon a little outrage.

--Adele M. Stan