Newsday: Clean the Entire House

Newsday doesn't think we should stop at cleaning the American experience of Mr. Rumsfeld. They've got some additional suggestions:

The long knives are out for Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. In the wake of the news about the abuse and torture of Iraqis detained at a notorious prison outside Baghdad, United States senators and even columnists for The New York Times are calling on President George W. Bush to give his defense secretary the heave-ho.

The reality is that, if Bush is going to clean house, it makes no sense to stop with Rumsfeld. Considering how the Bush administration has made a mess of the situation in Iraq - from the wrong intelligence about weapons of mass destruction to the incredible lack of planning for the post-war situation to the entirely unnecessary alienation of allies - the whole national security team should be fired.

It's just not Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz - and his deputy, Douglas Feith - it's also the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. They were wrong about the reasons for going to war; they were wrong about the danger of a terrorist attack before Sept. 11, 2001; they were wrong about how easy it would be to rebuild post-war Iraq, and they have been wrong about how Iraqis detained and imprisoned should be treated - not to mention denying U.S. citizens held in terrorism investigations their basic constitutional rights.

And we're not even talking here about the No. 1 honcho on every aspect of the war: Vice President Dick Cheney. He can't be fired, of course. But why does he have to be on the Republican ticket come November? Then again, the last president to shake up his government in a dramatic fashion was Jimmy Carter, and look where it got him. Once you take the top people out, there is only one person left to blame.

Bush, who has demonstrated unusual loyalty to his team, made it clear yesterday that, while he had criticized Rumsfeld publicly for not informing him of the pictures of the abused Iraqi detainees, he was not about to get rid of him. Maybe Bush is really angry about how Rumsfeld handled the prison matter. Or maybe he's just making a good show of separating himself from a situation that is not only going to hurt the United States' reputation in the Mideast, but hurt Bush's own re-election chances come November.

Rumsfeld has plenty to answer for. In the private world he would be out of a job by now. But he's in the world of politics and it's an election year. Then again, we are all members of the board of directors, and we get to vote come November.