If there was any lingering doubt that torture was a de facto policy in the U.S. government’s war on terror, the revelations of the past week have erased it.

An investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee, coupled with compelling reporting by The Washington Post and McClatchy Newspapers, has stripped away the remains of plausible deniability and traced the roots of terrorism detainee abuse to the White House door.

The Bush administration has long claimed that rogue soldiers were to blame for inhumane treatment of prisoners. It authorized “harsh” interrogation techiques, but only after military commanders couldn’t extract information by other means.

Or so the story goes. The Armed Services Committee has uncovered documents and e-mails that prove otherwise.

In July 2002 – months before commanders asked for broader authority – officials in then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office began researching sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions and waterboarding. They sought to borrow a page from the playbook of our worst enemies by reverse-engineering a program designed to prepare U.S. military for abusive interrogation practices.

Two months later, a delegation from Guantanamo attended one of the program’s training sessions. About that same time, former Pentagon general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, went to Guantanamo to discuss the interrrogation of prisoners.

Haynes and Addington were among the five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who dubbed themselves the “War Council” and were largely responsible for the legal framework that allowed the abuse of detainees. Their legal interpretations – many of which have since been rejected by courts – circumvented international laws and the military’s own code of justice. Military lawyers who objected to the new policies were ignored.

The findings of the Armed Services Committee clearly show the administration tacitly condoned and encouraged tactics that constitute torture. It is a conclusion made all the worse by a McClatchy Newspapers’ investigation that found abuse of detainees — many who were later released without charges – was far more routine and pervasive than previously thought.

Retired Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, said last week, “... there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has commited war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

Those are strong words, but the emerging picture of an administration hell-bent on waging war its way and answering to no one is appalling. It may take generations to undo the damage done to America’s standing in the world. But restoring our moral authority will first require a complete understanding of how we lost it.