The New York Times today has up a scathing new piece on a report from the Red Cross on the torture of detainees in U.S. custody that was issued in 2006 but only recently came to light. The findings are horrifying. Read the whole thing. Here’s the Times’ take:

What we can say with certainty, in the wake of the Red Cross report, is that the United States tortured prisoners and that the Bush administration, including the president himself, explicitly and aggressively denied that fact. We can also say that the decision to torture, in a political war with militant Islam, harmed American interests by destroying the democratic and Constitutional reputation of the United States, undermining its liberal sympathizers in the Muslim world and helping materially in the recruitment of young Muslims to the extremist cause. By deciding to torture, we freely chose to embrace the caricature they had made of us. The consequences of this choice, legal, political and moral, now confront us. Time and elections are not enough to make them go away.

The allegations of ill treatment of the detainees indicate that, in many cases, the ill treatment to which they were subjected while held in the C.I.A. program, either singly or in combination, constituted torture.

Questions about whether Obama “bit off more than he can chew”? Important!

Our former President systematically torturing people in violation of US and international law? Not important.