The U.S. Senate took an important bipartisan step last Wednesday when it overwhelmingly passed a measure to ban the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against any person held in U.S. government custody. The White House has threatened to veto the measure.

The legislation clearly is needed since U.S. soldiers have brutalized prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And military leaders at the highest levels appear to have tacitly approved such tactics.

This should shock the conscience of our nation and haunt the Bush administration.

The president opposes the legislation on the ground that it interferes with his role as commander in chief.

But we need to have a check on this power, and we need to abide by treaties banning torture.

Otherwise, the flagrant abuse will continue.

On Sept. 24, Human Rights Watch released a report that included firsthand soldier accounts of torture and severe beatings of Iraqi detainees in 2003 and 2004 that military intelligence personnel allegedly sanctioned.

“Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration, you show up at the PUC (Persons Under Control) tent,” said one sergeant who was stationed with the 82nd Airborne near Fallujah. “In a way, it was sport. One day, (a sergeant) shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy’s leg with a mini Louisville Slugger, a metal bat.”

On the Internet, an amateur porn site solicits photos of soldiers’ military experiences in exchange for free access to the site’s pornographic material.

“Well, you asked for some pics of the field and some bad guys,” wrote “One of the Good Guys,” who attached four horrific images of hooded captives and bodies of dead insurgents complete with blood trails.

An Army inquiry into the gore-for-porn controversy quickly ended after investigators said that there wasn’t enough evidence to pursue the case. Col. Joseph Curtin told The New York Times that investigators wouldn’t be able to continue their inquiry unless more information about the identities of the service personnel who had provided the photographs was revealed.

This sort of mealy mouthed response to an increasingly horrifying situation is unacceptable.

But that has been the norm with the Pentagon’s self-investigations into torture and abuse. The higher-ups, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, remain unscathed.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of Guantanamo Bay, allegedly told the guards to get tougher with prisoners. “The war is on,” he said to them, according to a new book by the discharged Army chaplain there, James J. Yee.

An Army investigation of abuses at Guantanamo Bay recommended that Miller be reprimanded, but the recommendation was overruled.

And Rumsfeld has not been held responsible for issuing a directive on Dec. 2, 2002, that authorized the use of “stress positions” and dogs. (Rumsfeld, under pressure from the Navy, rescinded the order six weeks later.)

Instead, the grunts get in trouble. On Sept. 26, 22-year-old Army Pfc. Lynndie England was found guilty of abusing prisoners at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. She was sentenced to three years for her crimes and given a dishonorable discharge.

On Sept. 29, U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the release of three videotapes and 74 photographs that document prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib despite attempts by the Bush administration to keep them out of the public eye.

As disturbing as these images are bound to be, maybe that’s what it will take to reawaken the American public to this shameful scandal, demand accountability at the top and pass legislation to prevent torture and abuse scandals in the future.