The Justice Department has finally admitted to the flaws in its policy concerning torture.

In a statement released Thursday, Justice revised early readings of the law that gave the president the latitude to disregard U.S. law by allowing the torture of prisoners detained during the war on terror.

What’s amazing is not that the Justice Department has come out strongly against torture, but that it has taken more than two years and numerous examples of abuse before the top law enforcement agency in the country took a clear stand for the law.

In an earlier opinion, the Office of Legal Counsel had advised that in extraordinary circumstances, the president of the United States could allow the torture of prisoners and that his immunity would transfer to the men and women who actually carried out the illegal acts. The office also defined torture in a very tortured way, saying that only causing organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death were punishable.

The new opinion takes a much stronger stand: “Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms. This universal repudiation of torture is reflected in our criminal law.” It then rightly rejects the earlier standard, which was outlined in a memo dated August 2002.

This change has taken too long. The earlier opinion gave the administration the justification it was looking for to go beyond what the law allows in the interrogation of persons detained in Iraq and Afghanistan. Far from being the handiwork of a few bad apples, the abuse of prisoners has become a systematic problem affecting interrogation procedures from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

We read this week’s memo (which can be viewed at www.usdoj.gov/olc/dagmemo.pdf) as an admission that the Justice Department and the White House erred in their interpretation of the law and conduct toward detainees. Now there must be a full accounting of what has happened, including punishment for those who have facilitated the breaking of U.S. law.