Editorial
Rumsfeld should resign

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Cabinet officials are recruited and retained for their judgment and credibility. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld fails President Bush in both areas and should resign.

Rumsfeld's poor judgment in handling the scandalous abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison destroyed his credibility with Congress and contributes to the erosion of U.S. standing in the world.

He acknowledged as much Friday during appearances before House and Senate investigating committees. Rumsfeld said he failed to recognize how important the grimly documented revelation of mistreatment and humiliation was. That failure goes beyond the war to the image and values of America and its people.

His departure would not be about appeasement of anti-war critics or, as Rumsfeld himself noted in an earlier press conference, a failure to manage public relations. Rumsfeld sits atop a chain of command that suffered a grievous breakdown in a key element of the troubled U.S. occupation — oversight of prisoners.

Their treatment should have been all the more controlled because they are housed in Saddam Hussein's infamous torture chambers. Everyone, from the enlisted soldier in the cellblock to the highest civilian and military echelons of the Pentagon, was amazingly tone deaf to the troubling practices — practices that were known as early as last fall.

A report in November by one of the Army's top law-enforcement officers noted the tensions between the missions of the military police who guard prisoners and the military, civilian and contract intelligence agents who want to grill them. The report concluded no military units had purposely done anything wrong.

Rumsfeld was briefed in mid-January about alleged abuses and photographs.

A subsequent Army investigation refuted the earlier report and provided a withering look inside the prison and the influence of intelligence officials who wanted prisoners softened up for interrogation.

Equally devastating was the portrait of a chaotic military chain of command and a lack of attention to the explosive topic of prisoner abuse and humiliation.

Central to the way democracies wage war is the civilian authority over — and responsibility for — military behavior. Condemning the abuses at Abu Ghraib is specific to that place and time, and not a rebuke to everyone in uniform.

But Abu Ghraib carries a terrible price and that is the effect the scandalous acts impose on American servicemen and women in Iraq and elsewhere. Too many others in the American-led coalition will face greater dangers and deeper suspicion because of what happened at Abu Ghraib.

Ultimately, the responsibility falls on the secretary of defense for those under his command. For the mistreatment of prisoners held under the flag of the United States, Rumsfeld should resign.