The nonpartisan Constitutional Project, created to bring together "policy experts and legal practitioners from across the political spectrum to foster consensus-based solutions to the most difficult constitutional challenges of our time," has issued a compelling and deeply distressing report about the use of torture by the United States in violation of its laws, its international agreements and the principles that it professes to defend.

Members of the blue-ribbon panel investigating the subject included former Republican congressman Asa Hutchinson, former FBI Director William Sessions, two retired generals, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under the first President Bush, legal and medical experts and a professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University.

The report is blunt and painfully honest: "It is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture." Task force members found that the critical decision that led to this descent into immorality by the United States was the decision shortly after Sept. 11 that "the Geneva Conventions, a venerable instrument for ensuring humane treatment in time of war, did not apply to Al Qaeda and Taliban captives in Afghanistan or Guantanamo."

It then goes on to quote retired Marine generals Charles Krulak and Joseph Hoar, who have pointed out that "any degree of 'flexibility' about torture at the top drops down the chain of command like a stone -- the rare exception fast becoming the rule.'" The tragedy at Abu Graib prison, in other words, was inevitable.

(Although the report does not address the issue, the injustice was compounded when enlisted personnel caught engaging in acts of torture at Abu Graib were punished severely for behavior that had been approved and even encouraged at the very highest levels of the U.S. government. Those men and women were sacrificed in a false effort to cleanse our national reputation.)

In addition, "Lawyers in the Justice Department provided legal guidance, in the aftermath of the attacks, that seemed to go to great lengths to allow treatment that amounted to torture. To deal with the regime of laws and treaties designed to prohibit and prevent torture, the lawyers provided novel, if not acrobatic interpretations to allow the mistreatment of prisoners.... the memorable language -- limiting the definition of torture to those acts that might implicate organ failure -- remain a stain on the image of the United States, and the memos are a potential aid to repressive regimes elsewhere when they seek approval or justification for their own acts."

With that as introduction, here are the report's three most fundamental findings:

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Finding #1

"U.S. forces, in many instances, used interrogation techniques on detainees that constitute torture. American personnel conducted an even larger number of interrogations that involved "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment. Both categories of actions violate U.S. laws and international treaties. Such conduct was directly counter to values of the Constitution and our nation. The Task Force believes there was no justification for the responsible government and military leaders to have allowed those lines to be crossed. Doing so damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive. Democracy and torture cannot peacefully coexist in the same body politic."

Finding #2

The nation's most senior officials, through some of their actions and failures to act in the months and years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks, bear ultimate responsibility for allowing and contributing to the spread of illegal and improper interrogation techniques used by some U.S. personnel on detainees in several theaters. Responsibility also falls on other government officials and certain military leaders. Regardless of political party, the leaders of this country should acknowledge that the authorization and practice of torture and cruelty after Sept. 11 was a grave error, and take the steps necessary to ensure that it cannot be repeated. Torture and "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment" are incompatible not only with U.S. law, but with the country's founding values. No government can be trusted with the power to inflict torment on captives.

Finding #3

There is no firm or persuasive evidence that the widespread use of harsh interrogation techniques by U.S. forces produced significant information of value. There is substantial evidence that much of the information adduced from the use of such techniques was not useful or reliable. There are, nonetheless, strong assertions by some former senior government officials that the use of those techniques did, in fact, yield valuable intelligence that resulted in operational and strategic successes. But those officials say that the evidence of such success may not be disclosed for reasons of national security.

The Task Force appreciates this concern and understands it must be taken into account in attempting to resolve this question. Nonetheless, the Task Force believes those who make this argument still bear the burden of demonstrating its factual basis. History shows that the American people have a right to be skeptical of such claims, and to decline to accept any resolution of this issue based largely on the exhortations of former officials who say, in essence, "Trust us" or "If you knew what we know but cannot tell you."

In addition, those who make the argument in favor of the efficacy of coercive interrogations face some inherent credibility issues. One of the most significant is that they generally include those people who authorized and implemented the very practices that they now assert to have been valuable tools in fighting terrorism. As the techniques were and remain highly controversial, it is reasonable to note that those former officials have a substantial reputational stake in their claim being accepted.

Were it to be shown that the United States gained little or no benefit from practices that arguably violated domestic and international law, history would render a harsh verdict on those who set us on that course.

On the question as to whether coercive interrogation techniques were valuable in locating Osama bin Laden, the Task Force is inclined to accept the assertions of leading members of the Senate Intelligence Committee that their examination of the largest body of classified documents relating to this shows that there was no noteworthy connection between information gained from such interrogations and the finding of Osama bin Laden."

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There's an old saying that character is what you do when nobody is looking. Likewise, a nation's character is tested by whether it adheres to or abandons the principles that it claims to hold dear even in times of stress. We, the United States, failed that test. For decades, we had piously condemned Third World dictators and communist regimes for trying to justify torture, refusing to accept their claims that the practice was necessary to defend their nation against its enemies. Saddam Hussein's use of torture was repeatedly used to justify our attempt to remove him from power. Yet when our own time came, we did no better.

That said, I have never supported efforts to go back and prosecute government officials who so clearly broke U.S. and international law against the use of torture. Doing so would turn them into scapegoats for our collective shame just as surely as enlisted personnel at Abu Graib were used in that fashion. We all knew, at some level, that torture was being used on our alleged behalf. And while I and many others may have protested at the time, the harsh truth is that as a people, as a nation, we chose to allow it to continue. Given that history, any effort to pin responsibility on individuals would be an effort to exonerate ourselves as a nation, and frankly we do not deserve that exoneration.