The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board

You want to avert your eyes, as if not seeing atrocity makes it not so.

The newly released report on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's prolific use of torture in the war on terror is a litany of vile acts undertaken in our names, by those entrusted to lead our nation.

Look away? That's the sin committed by former President George W. Bush, who first explicitly and then tacitly authorized the use of tactics — a polite term for actions that amount to rape, brutal beatings, repeated drownings, in short: torture — that the United States, along with every other peer nation, has pledged not to use.

It's the sin committed by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who continues, unrepentant, to insist the atrocities committed by the U.S. government and its contractors were justified.

It's the sin committed by some members of the U.S. Congress, who chose for far too long not to look too closely, or who, like Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, argued until the final hours that it was better to bury the records of our shame than to confess, and seek forgiveness.

And, finally, it is the sin committed by all of us, who returned a morally compromised president to office, and failed to hold the men and women charged with representing us in Washington, D.C., and abroad responsible for the atrocities committed in our names.

This, then, is the legacy of President Bush, surely a failed leader by any measure: A squandering of America's stature as a country that could claim some moral authority. The betrayal of our Founding Fathers, sons of the Enlightenment who banned torture in the Bill of Rights, one of the documents that define America. An abrogation of an international treaty written in one of humanity's darkest epochs, an attempt to hold the line of civilization against creeping evil.

And a lasting diminution of America's influence and credibility on the world stage, a sin for which Bush can never be called to account.

A U.S. Department of Justice investigation into the deaths of two detainees, concluded in 2012, didn't result in criminal charges. Not, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said, because the agency acted appropriately, but because there was insufficient evidence. This newly released report, the product of a five-year U.S. Senate investigation, should produce a different outcome.

These are painful things to acknowledge, but for the U.S. to regain international credibility, we must come to terms with what we've done. Those responsible must be held accountable for the damage done. That should mean criminal prosecution, because the acts described in this report are in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In the hectic days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with the backing of our allies and the goodwill of many of our historic adversaries, this nation could have embarked on a radically different path. We could have forged new alliances, showed that even in our darkest days, the world should follow where America led. President Bush chose a different path. He launched a shoddy war on the flimsiest of excuses, the intelligence that supposedly justified his assault later proved false. He chose to either ignore what even a casual observer should have known was happening, or authorized a rogue intelligence agency over which he had no control.

The report found that the CIA routinely lied to Congress and to Bush administration officials about the quality of information obtained through torture and the severity of its tactics; the agency acknowledges it made mistakes but says it never willfully misled. These distinctions are immaterial, incremental gradations of blame that do not dilute our shame.

Because that is what this report is: A national shame. A chronicle of brutality that should shock even the most hardened reader. To defend the actions of CIA interrogators is impossible. Detainees were forced to stand on broken feet. Raped. Drowned. Subjected to extreme heat and cold, in at least one instance, fatally — all while Bush described the CIA's interrogation methods as "humane and legal." All in pursuit of information that never materialized, because it is generally acknowledged that torture does not produce reliable intelligence.

We did this. So don't look away — from the report, or from the acts of contrition it demands.