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Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses -- and reports of those abuses have been appearing since at least December 2002, when a Post story reported on harsh "stress and duress" interrogation techniques bordering on physical torture. Other reports by journalists and such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the lawless detention and criminal treatment of detainees, including the deaths of at least two prisoners at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan that were ruled homicides by military investigators. Yesterday the Army revealed that two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. prison guards last year and that 20 other detainee deaths and assaults are still being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been criminally charged in any of these deaths.

SECRETARY OF Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday described the abuses of Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison as "an exceptional, isolated" case. At best, that is only partly true. Similar mistreatment of prisoners held by U.S. military or intelligence forces abroad has been reported since the beginning of the war on terrorism. A pattern of arrogant disregard for the protections of the Geneva Conventions or any other legal procedure has been set from the top, by Mr. Rumsfeld and senior U.S. commanders. Well-documented accounts of human rights violations have been ignored or covered up, including some more serious than those reported at Abu Ghraib. In the end, the latest allegations may be distinguished mainly by the fact that they have led to court-martial charges -- and by the leak of shocking photographs that brought home to Americans, and the world, the gravity of the offenses.

Rectifying the problems dramatized by the Abu Ghraib photos will require far more than prosecution of a handful of reservists who committed abuses. Military intelligence officers and private contractors who encouraged or ordered maltreatment also must be prosecuted. Senior officers and administration officials responsible for creating the lawless system of detention and interrogation employed in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere since 2001 should be held accountable. And the system itself must, at last, be changed to conform with the Geneva Conventions and other international norms of human rights. Congress, above all, must finally begin to exercise its authority to oversee and regulate the administration's handling of foreign detainees. That several of its senior Republican members were proclaiming themselves shocked yesterday to learn of the abuses -- as if none had been previously reported -- was itself shameful.

The foundation for the crimes at Abu Ghraib was laid more than two years ago, when Mr. Rumsfeld instituted a system of holding detainees from Afghanistan not only incommunicado, without charge, and without legal process, but without any meaningful oversight mechanism at all. Brushing off his violation of the Geneva Conventions, Mr. Rumsfeld maintained that the system was necessary to extract important intelligence. But it was also an invitation to abuses -- and reports of those abuses have been appearing since at least December 2002, when a Post story reported on harsh "stress and duress" interrogation techniques bordering on physical torture. Other reports by journalists and such groups as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch documented the lawless detention and criminal treatment of detainees, including the deaths of at least two prisoners at the Bagram air base in Afghanistan that were ruled homicides by military investigators. Yesterday the Army revealed that two Iraqi prisoners were killed by U.S. prison guards last year and that 20 other detainee deaths and assaults are still being investigated in Iraq and Afghanistan. No one has been criminally charged in any of these deaths.

The reported abuses at Abu Ghraib were in line with the earlier reports. Carried out by untrained reservists, they look like particularly harsh examples of the practices -- such as holding prisoners naked or forcing them to stand in uncomfortable positions for long periods -- commonly reported elsewhere. In response to these reports and complaints from human rights groups and foreign governments, the Bush administration pledged a year ago not to subject any foreign detainee to treatment unacceptable under the U.S. Constitution. But there is no evidence that the administration ever distributed guidelines implementing its decision to the military or intelligence agencies -- and the official investigations of Abu Ghraib show that there at least, the policy was never applied.

We have been saying for some time that Congress has neglected its responsibility to oversee the administration's conduct and provide the missing legal framework for handling foreign detainees. The result of its inaction and of the administration's refusal to respond to previous reports of abuses is the scandal of Abu Ghraib, which has done incalculable damage to the U.S. position in Iraq and around the world. The only way to even partial recovery is a full and independent congressional investigation of the abuses, both in Iraq and elsewhere; prosecution of all those responsible for crimes; and, finally, a resolve to handle prisoners in conformance with American standards of decency.