The left and their allies in the media spend so much time agonizing over the conditions at Guantanamo Bay that it’s always refreshing to see an article like this come out to set the record straight.

For sheer irony it’s hard to beat this week’s spectacle of Cindy Sheehan protesting the U.S. detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay—from inside the prison that is Cuba itself. It’s not uncommon for asylum-seeking Cubans to brave minefields and shark-infested waters to enter the U.S. naval base, which five years ago this week also became home to many top figures from al Qaeda and the Taliban.

That anniversary has brought forth predictable demands that Guantanamo be closed from the self-styled human rights activists at Amnesty International and other groups. But the world needs a place to hold al Qaeda terrorists, who continue to strike in Europe, Iraq and Afghanistan—even if they have failed to hit the United States since 2001. And after visiting Guantanamo just before Christmas, it was easy to understand why Belgian Police official Alain Grignard (who came last year with a delegation from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) was moved to declare it “a model prison, where people are better treated than in Belgian prisons.”

This is no less true of Camp Five, Gitmo’s maximum security facility that houses its most dangerous detainees. Modern and clean, it looks just like a U.S. jail. Meals (I ate the same lunch the detainees did that day) are high in caloric content, if not exactly gourmet. The average detainee has gained 18 pounds. And in the interrogation room it’s the Americans who may have to suffer long hours in straight-back chairs, while the detainees—I kid you not—get a La-Z-Boy. I was shown a Syrian under interrogation via closed circuit television. His questioners were two pleasant-looking young women. He was smiling.

I’m not under the impression that these sessions are always fun and games. But detainees in Defense Department custody are treated according to the restrictive rules of the Army Field Manual, which bans all forms of coercive interrogation. I double checked with the camp’s lead interrogator: other government agencies—read CIA and FBI—have to follow those rules too. Not only does that mean no “torture” is going on. Your average good-cop bad-cop routine isn’t allowed. Cooperative detainees get rewards like movies. “Harry Potter” is one of their favorites.

Seems kind of silly that we spend so much time talking about the treatment of terrorists in captivity at one of our Naval bases when it has become clear that the treatment of said terrorists is perfectly adequate.  More than adequate, actually.

We have better things to be worried about.  Like, you know, actually fighting the terrorists.  Of course, the terrorists love that we spend so much time talking about the way we’re treating their comrades-in-arms who are in our captivity.  The more attention the politicians/media/international community spends blathering about American treatment of detainees in the war on terror the less time those people, and and the folks who actually listen to them, have to focus on the misdeeds and abominations committed by the terrorists who are still free.

Which is just the way the like it, believe you me.