By David Kasper

The fact that the US government designed and implemented an elaborate system of arbitrary detention and torture during the Bush administration has been clearly established. Yet there are still defenders who deny that what happened was actually torture. They claim that “enhanced interrogation techniques” were justified because they were successful and necessary to Keep Us Safe from terrorists. We are still hearing this from people like Dick Cheney, Jose Rodriguez, John Yoo and their supporters in the media, and in portrayals such as the movie Zero Dark Thirty. This is despite the fact that more than 100 detainees have died during detention, many likely tortured to death.

President Obama’s refusal to support any investigation or prosecution of torture crimes has helped to further this phony narrative. As Daniel Ellsberg points out in Seizing Power, even though Obama promised not to engage in torture, he has effectively decriminalized it and kept it as an option that he or his successor could re-implement at any time. Some suspect that torture is still going on secretly in places like Bagram prison in Afghanistan, and that it is being outsourced to other governments to maintain deniability.

The success of the “torture keeps us safe” narrative can be seen in a recent poll showing that 47% of the public believes that torture is always or sometimes justified. Efforts by the White House, the Justice Department and the CIA to suppress facts about the torture program, and to control the public’s perception have been undeniably effective. Suppression continues with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s refusal to release a 6,000-page report that, according to those who have seen it, blows the lid off of the official version pushed by the White House and the CIA.

A new report by the Constitution Project, an independent research group, strongly debunks the official story. This detailed report concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture” and that those responsible included the highest officials in the White House, the Justice Department and the CIA. This report makes it much more difficult for torture proponents to continue their false narrative, and gets us closer to a full accounting of what happened and a form of justice for the perpetrators.