Third, the report is important as a tool to shame federal lawmakers, and Justice Department officials, to do more to develop the historical record of this story. "The members of the Task Force believe there may be more to be learned," the report concludes, through the use of "subpoena power to compel testimony and the capability to review classified materials." There is no reason to think that the Obama Administration or Congress would now undertake such a review. But will the White House or Congressional leaders even be questioned about the report and its conclusions?

Fourth, there are the recommendations made by panel members. One is that the government should "strengthen the criminal prohibitions against torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." Another is that the President should "direct the CIA to declassify the evidence necessary for the American public to better evaluate" the torture claims. Only on the topic of whether to close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, did Task Force members disagree. Two conservative panelists argued in favor of keeping the facility open for now. Will these recommendations even be seriously debated in Washington?

Since I have little standing to speak about the substance of the report -- since so few of us can truly understand what American policy really meant for those who found themselves in those interrogation rooms-- I thought it would make sense to ask someone who does to share with us his perceptions of the work done by the Task Force. So I asked Maher Arar for his views. Arar is the Syrian-born Canadian resident who was apprehended by American forces in 2002, tortured in Syria, and then released without charges or a trial (or an apology from U.S. officials).

After reading the report, I asked, what would you want to say to John Yoo or any of the other architects of the American torture policy? Arar told me: "If anything your torture program not only was harmful to the people you torture but it was equally harmful to your nation's ideals and values. Your forefathers and Founders would be ashamed of your actions. ... Today," he continued, "the main target are Muslims. Tomorrow it could be you. Never take what your officials say for granted."

I also posed these questions, and more, to Omar Deghayes, a Libyan man who was tortured at Guantanamo Bay, to read the report and to offer his perspective. What happened to Deghayes is appalling. In 2010 he shared his story with the Guardian's Patrick Barkham:

It is not hot stabbing pain that Omar Deghayes remembers from the day a Guantánamo guard blinded him, but the cool sen­sation of fingers being stabbed deep into his eyeballs. He had joined other prisoners in protesting against a new humiliation -- inmates ­being forced to take off their trousers and walk round in their pants -- and a group of guards had entered his cell to punish him. He was held down and bound with chains. "I didn't realise what was going on until the guy had pushed his fingers ­inside my eyes and I could feel the coldness of his fingers. Then I realised he was trying to gouge out my eyes," Deghayes says. He wanted to scream in agony, but was determined not to give his torturers the satisfaction. Then the officer standing over him instructed the eye-stabber to push harder. "When he pulled his hands out, I remember I couldn't see anything -- I'd lost sight completely in both eyes." Deghayes was dumped in a cell, fluid streaming from his eyes. The sight in his left eye returned over the following days, but he is still blind in his right eye. He also has a crooked nose (from being punched by the guards, he says) and a scar across his forefinger (slammed in a prison door), but otherwise this resident of Saltdean, near Brighton, appears ­relatively ­unscarred from the more than five years he spent locked in Guantánamo Bay.

Deghayes is one of the lucky ones. He was thereafter released from Gitmo, without ever having to stand trial, and now lives as a free man. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.