EDITORIAL
Abu Ghraib: Extreme housecleaning needed

President Bush has made a vital first step in apologizing personally for the horrific abuses by American interrogators and guards at the Abu Ghraib prison.

But an apology is worth nothing, either to Iraqi victims or to bitterly disappointed Americans and their allies, unless it is followed immediately by sweeping measures to clean house.

Bush's next necessary steps include full cooperation in a searching and honest assessment by Congress of the extent to which this cancer on our occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere has metasticized.

Proliferating reports from sources ranging from the International Red Cross to the families of Iraqi prisoners and the Justice Department make clear that what last week seemed the isolated predations of a few rogue Reservists at Abu Ghraib may be instead widespread and systemic.

We think calls for the resignation or firing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are premature, but so are the expressions of unconditional White House support for him. There's no question that his tenure at the Pentagon is on shaky ground.

It is likely an earnest inquiry will find that the trouble began more than two years ago when Rumsfeld decided to overturn decades of previous practice by the U.S. military in its handling of detainees in foreign countries, including a declaration that the United States would no longer be bound by the Geneva Conventions.

It's hard to imagine how these decisions might not have contributed to an atmosphere of lawlessness that has produced beatings, humiliation, torture and alleged murder.

A crucial question will be whether what has transpired is a fundamental breakdown in the chain of command under Rumsfeld or if some operation somewhere in the military-intelligence command, unknown to Rumsfeld, has run amok.

Particularly worrisome in this regard is the unprecedented reliance on civilian contractors as interrogators. They fall into a legal gray area that may free them of restraint and accountability.

Bush's apology hardly puts this terrible problem behind us. It's important and welcomed, but only the first step of a long and painful restoration of our national pride.